I was an employee referral and had two on-site interviews at Gotham (NYC office).

It took about two weeks to schedule the first on-site interview, which consisted of three technical screens and one culture screen. I heard back within a week that there would be a second on-site follow-up with a hiring manager. This interview proceeded about two weeks later, also on-site at Gotham.

I heard a week later there would be a third round, a conversation with a director. This happened over Skype within a few days. A few days later, I received an official offer.

The process overall was positive, if a bit long (seven weeks from first interview to offer). I got a good overview of the company and its culture throughout, and had a good view of what I was getting myself into.

Tips:

• What matters to Palantir is impact. Focus on what you did in your last role (and even before that) and the impact it had on your organization, your customers, your reports, your product, etc. The interviewers (all of them) are very keen on detecting any sense of vagueness in answers. They will push you to be very clear, concrete, and reflective about what you did and its outcomes. Have a solid story and a solid understanding of its impact, and you'll do fine.

• Technical questions are tough but not brain-teasers. Reasonable implementation followed by average and asymptotic runtime analysis and algorithm/data structure improvement is the name of the game until you have the optimal implementation or you run out of time, not different from most companies. Also, they will ask about problem decomposition. Be very clear with assumptions upfront, sketch out your approach, verify it with the interviewer, and then move on with how you want to break down the problem.

• Finally, be able to confidently and sincerely answer, "Why Palantir?" The entire company cares deeply about this, and square pegs don't fit in round holes. Convince yourself before you sign on that it's the place for you.

Standard algorithm problems and problem decomposition.