Palantir

Forward Deployed Software Engineer Interview Experience

November 26, 2024

Positive ExperienceNo Offer

Process

The interview process was very straightforward:

First round: Technical interview

Second round: Superday interview with 3 different rounds

Third round: Hiring manager interview

HR allowed me to delay my Superday interview by a few days as I was sick, but I would recommend just going through with your interview instead.

Questions

Mixture of LeetCode questions and algorithm design questions that were mixed up.

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Interview Statistics

The following metrics were computed from 139 interview experiences for the Palantir Forward Deployed Software Engineer role in United States.

Success Rate

11%

Pass Rate

Palantir's interview process for their Forward Deployed Software Engineer roles in the United States is extremely selective, failing the vast majority of engineers.

Experience Rating

Positive48%

Neutral30%

Negative22%

Candidates reported having very good feelings for Palantir's Forward Deployed Software Engineer interview process in United States.

Palantir Work Experiences

Interesting Work, Growing Pains

Forward Deployed Software Engineer • Former Employee

Palo Alto, California, United States

Pros: They deal with some very interesting problems.

Cons: Management is going through growing pains and doesn't know how to allocate work properly. Sometimes it seemed fairly haphazard in organizing. Pressure to work a ton.

Interesting Work, Growing Pains

Forward Deployed Software Engineer • Former Employee

Palo Alto, California, United States

Pros: They deal with some very interesting problems.

Cons: Management is going through growing pains and doesn't know how to allocate work properly. Sometimes it seemed fairly haphazard in organizing. Pressure to work a ton.

Not what it used to be

Forward Deployed Software Engineer • Former Employee

London, England, United Kingdom

September 20, 2023

Pros: Amazing people, impactful projects, nice food, good exit options.

Cons: Very political, no pay transparency, limited growth, hard work.

Not what it used to be

Forward Deployed Software Engineer • Former Employee

London, England, United Kingdom

September 20, 2023

Pros: Amazing people, impactful projects, nice food, good exit options.

Cons: Very political, no pay transparency, limited growth, hard work.

Fast-paced and lots of exposure, but long hours and a sink-or-swim culture

Forward Deployed Software Engineer • Current Employee

London, England, United Kingdom

September 10, 2025

Pros: A very agile and action-oriented environment. FDEs are encouraged to find a need in the project and develop their own slice of it. Resourcing responds to this by moving you to other projects that can best make use of the spike you've demonstrated in the process. You can quickly build on Foundry. Tackling technical problems at a high level means you get a huge amount of exposure to different problem spaces.

Cons: It can be a very sink or swim environment. It's also not as technical as your usual software engineering roles, as you're generally building on top of Foundry, which is already a well-built-out platform. Depending on your project, you can be frequently working long hours.

Fast-paced and lots of exposure, but long hours and a sink-or-swim culture

Forward Deployed Software Engineer • Current Employee

London, England, United Kingdom

September 10, 2025

Pros: A very agile and action-oriented environment. FDEs are encouraged to find a need in the project and develop their own slice of it. Resourcing responds to this by moving you to other projects that can best make use of the spike you've demonstrated in the process. You can quickly build on Foundry. Tackling technical problems at a high level means you get a huge amount of exposure to different problem spaces.

Cons: It can be a very sink or swim environment. It's also not as technical as your usual software engineering roles, as you're generally building on top of Foundry, which is already a well-built-out platform. Depending on your project, you can be frequently working long hours.

Interesting Work, Growing Pains

Forward Deployed Software Engineer • Former Employee

Palo Alto, California, United States

Pros: They deal with some very interesting problems.

Cons: Management is going through growing pains and doesn't know how to allocate work properly. Sometimes it seemed fairly haphazard in organizing. Pressure to work a ton.

4.0
Interesting Work, Growing Pains
Forward Deployed Software Engineer • Former Employee
Palo Alto, California, United States
March 15, 2014
Pros: They deal with some very interesting problems.
Cons: Management is going through growing pains and doesn't know how to allocate work properly. Sometimes it seemed fairly haphazard in organizing. Pressure to work a ton.

Not what it used to be

Forward Deployed Software Engineer • Former Employee

London, England, United Kingdom

September 20, 2023

Pros: Amazing people, impactful projects, nice food, good exit options.

Cons: Very political, no pay transparency, limited growth, hard work.

3.0
Not what it used to be
Forward Deployed Software Engineer • Former Employee
London, England, United Kingdom
September 20, 2023
Pros: Amazing people, impactful projects, nice food, good exit options.
Cons: Very political, no pay transparency, limited growth, hard work.

Fast-paced and lots of exposure, but long hours and a sink-or-swim culture

Forward Deployed Software Engineer • Current Employee

London, England, United Kingdom

September 10, 2025

Pros: A very agile and action-oriented environment. FDEs are encouraged to find a need in the project and develop their own slice of it. Resourcing responds to this by moving you to other projects that can best make use of the spike you've demonstrated in the process. You can quickly build on Foundry. Tackling technical problems at a high level means you get a huge amount of exposure to different problem spaces.

Cons: It can be a very sink or swim environment. It's also not as technical as your usual software engineering roles, as you're generally building on top of Foundry, which is already a well-built-out platform. Depending on your project, you can be frequently working long hours.

4.0
Fast-paced and lots of exposure, but long hours and a sink-or-swim culture
Forward Deployed Software Engineer • Current Employee
London, England, United Kingdom
September 10, 2025
Pros: A very agile and action-oriented environment. FDEs are encouraged to find a need in the project and develop their own slice of it. Resourcing responds to this by moving you to other projects that can best make use of the spike you've demonstrated in the process. You can quickly build on Foundry. Tackling technical problems at a high level means you get a huge amount of exposure to different problem spaces.
Cons: It can be a very sink or swim environment. It's also not as technical as your usual software engineering roles, as you're generally building on top of Foundry, which is already a well-built-out platform. Depending on your project, you can be frequently working long hours.

Palantir Interview Questions

Find Beautiful Indices in the Given Array I

Given a string and two substrings, find the indices where the first substring occurs. Then, find the indices where the second substring occurs. Return the indices of the first substring that are close to any index of the second substring, within a specified range.

ArraysStringsTwo Pointers

Smallest String With Swaps

You're given a string and a list of index pairs. You can swap characters at these indices any number of times. Find the lexicographically smallest string you can obtain after performing these swaps.

ArraysStringsGraphsGreedy Algorithms

Find Beautiful Indices in the Given Array II

You're given a string and two patterns. Find all 'beautiful' indices where an occurrence of the first pattern is within 'k' distance of an occurrence of the second pattern.

ArraysStringsTwo Pointers

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