Steps 1 and 2 were a typical online coding challenge and a tech phone screen.

1. On-Site Interviews Part 1

• Informal 1-on-1 chat with a current engineer, which they called the "Palantir 1 on 1."
• 1st coding interview. Standard coding interview with a team lead engineer. We talked about backgrounds a bit; he actually asked me to go into a fair amount of detail about my current work, and I even ended up drawing a diagram on the whiteboard to explain some system design concepts. Then he asked me an easy coding question.
• 2nd coding interview. Less background, went into the coding problem fairly quickly. The interviewer was only a couple years out of college and seemed a bit inexperienced technically. When talking about runtimes, I actually corrected the interviewer about some Python API runtimes, which the interviewer seemed to appreciate and regard as a positive.
• 3rd coding interview. This was stated to be a "decomp" (decomposition) interview, which is basically Palantir's version of the design interview, but was essentially no different from a regular coding interview. The question itself was technically easy.
• Informal lunch chat. My host for this seemed pretty distracted and was on her phone a lot, and even interrupted to take a few phone calls.
• 1-on-1 Product demo. It essentially turned into another informal 1-on-1 chat.

1. On-Site Interviews Part 2

I was invited to more on-site interviews, which wasn't a surprise. I was surprised, however, when the recruiter said that they wanted me to do one more coding interview (in addition to the hiring manager interview) because some of the feedback indicated that my coding was a bit slow. Fine, but I'm not sure how much faster they expect you to code if they also want you to properly explain everything you're doing.

• Another informal warmup chat to start, with a team lead engineer.
• The coding interview. Jumped straight into the question.
• Hiring manager interview. The first half of this was going through my resume and asking about my background. I did not major in CS in college, so they really wanted to understand my switch from physics to CS and my previous job, etc. They were also very focused on understanding why I wanted to join Palantir. The second half was another decomp question, this time with no actual coding, but just talking about the problem on the board with rough diagrams.

The recruiter called me a couple days later to tell me that all the feedback was "very positive" and that my coding, culture fit, behavioral questions, motivation for joining Palantir, etc., were all extremely positive. However, this is when stuff started to get weird for me. Instead of proceeding with an offer (which is what I had been led to believe would happen after the second round of on-site interviews), the recruiter asked me if I were interested in a Forward Deployed Software Engineer role instead. This role requires lots of travel directly into client offices and is essentially just being a consultant. I had been very clear since the very first recruiter call (right after the online coding challenge, but before the tech phone screen) that I was not interested in this position and that travel was a big no for me. At that time, they had clearly understood my desire and said that I would be proceeding with interviews in consideration for the regular Software Engineer role. So I was surprised that they seemed to be trying to do a bait-and-switch for the FDSE role instead at this late stage. I pushed back—I asked if this was a choice or if it was being forced onto me—and the recruiter backed off a bit, although she still said they would have to talk more about it. Another review here on Glassdoor has said that Palantir is desperate for people to fill the FDSE role, since it doesn't seem to be very popular. I really felt this when the recruiter tried to gauge my interest for the FDSE role.

A couple of days later, the recruiter gets back to me and says that they would like me to do yet another interview, this time with a Team Lead Software Engineer to gauge my fit for the regular Software Engineer role. At this point, I am starting to get uncomfortable flags in my head. I had already talked to two Team Lead Software Engineers in my interviews; why weren't they able to get the feedback they wanted from those individuals?

Continued in "interview questions" section