I applied online when contacted by a recruiter. I was told there would be a "first" call to get to know about my background and learn about theirs. I asked explicitly if this would involve a technical interview, and was very explicitly told "no"; there would be no technical questions, and it would only involve a casual research discussion.

On to the actual call. After an "about me" question, the interviewer proceeded into an ML system design deep dive. This was not explicitly related to my background; it was more like, "Here is an ML problem we deal with; how would you design a system for it?" I came up with a good solution, but the interviewer seemed to be looking for a very specific alternative approach, which was arguably worse. They didn't seem to care about understanding the differences either.

After that, they brought up literal "slides" with statistics questions to quiz me. I would have prepared or at least been mentally ready for this, and I specifically asked if this was a technical interview and was told a flat-out no!

The call itself was scheduled for 45 minutes only but went on for 70 minutes. There was no apology for overshooting our time, no suggestion to schedule another call, and no asking me if I was available beyond the 45 minutes to continue talking. I have given too many interviews in the last year and never encountered such bad interviewers.

If the company is willing to go to such lengths to lie about the interview process, I can only imagine what it's like to work there. I would not recommend even considering interviewing there. From what I have found out, even the pay is much less than other finance companies. A huge waste of time!

Design a system and solve an ML problem.

Quiz on statistics.