Palantir

Software Engineer Interview Experience - United Kingdom

July 17, 2019

Neutral ExperienceNo Offer

Process

Focused on algorithms and data structures. They copied the Google/Facebook interview process, despite the fact that most of Palantir's problems are much smaller scale.

Applied through an agency, the agent couldn't give any detail on the company beyond "really cool offices, cutting edge tech," so I had to wait for a call with an internal recruiter. The internal recruiter was equally unhelpful.

Speaking to developers cleared it up, after we spent 40 minutes doing first-year CS puzzles.

Questions

Implement a distributed system to calculate the global median value of integers stored on different machines.

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Interview Statistics

The following metrics were computed from 65 interview experiences for the Palantir Software Engineer role in United Kingdom.

Success Rate

2%

Pass Rate

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

Experience Rating

Positive54%

Neutral26%

Negative20%

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

Palantir Work Experiences

A challenging place to work, in good and bad ways

Software Engineer • Former Employee

Pros: Engineers that are talented both technically and in terms of product intuition, in very difficult and important application areas.

Cons: Working long hours is necessary for job advancement. It is difficult to speak about your technical work publicly, which makes it hard to be part of the broader engineering community.

A challenging place to work, in good and bad ways

Software Engineer • Former Employee

Pros: Engineers that are talented both technically and in terms of product intuition, in very difficult and important application areas.

Cons: Working long hours is necessary for job advancement. It is difficult to speak about your technical work publicly, which makes it hard to be part of the broader engineering community.

Fast-paced, exciting

Software Engineer • Current Employee

London, England, United Kingdom

November 18, 2024

Pros: Autonomy, pace, rapidly-growing/changing, so lots of opportunity.

Cons: Exec steering can be hard to keep up with.

Fast-paced, exciting

Software Engineer • Current Employee

London, England, United Kingdom

November 18, 2024

Pros: Autonomy, pace, rapidly-growing/changing, so lots of opportunity.

Cons: Exec steering can be hard to keep up with.

One of the best (and most intense) jobs you'll ever have

Software Engineer • Former Employee

Palo Alto, California, United States

January 14, 2014

Pros: Amazingly smart coworkers and managers -- a much denser concentration of brilliant people than anywhere else I've worked. Great office perks (food, dogs, etc). Fun culture.

Cons: If you're looking for anything close to a 40-hour work-week, then Palantir probably isn't the right place for you. They expect a substantial, continuing commitment of time and energy. Expect to spend most of your waking life in the office.

One of the best (and most intense) jobs you'll ever have

Software Engineer • Former Employee

Palo Alto, California, United States

January 14, 2014

Pros: Amazingly smart coworkers and managers -- a much denser concentration of brilliant people than anywhere else I've worked. Great office perks (food, dogs, etc). Fun culture.

Cons: If you're looking for anything close to a 40-hour work-week, then Palantir probably isn't the right place for you. They expect a substantial, continuing commitment of time and energy. Expect to spend most of your waking life in the office.

A challenging place to work, in good and bad ways

Software Engineer • Former Employee

Pros: Engineers that are talented both technically and in terms of product intuition, in very difficult and important application areas.

Cons: Working long hours is necessary for job advancement. It is difficult to speak about your technical work publicly, which makes it hard to be part of the broader engineering community.

4.0
A challenging place to work, in good and bad ways
Software Engineer • Former Employee
July 29, 2019
Pros: Engineers that are talented both technically and in terms of product intuition, in very difficult and important application areas.
Cons: Working long hours is necessary for job advancement. It is difficult to speak about your technical work publicly, which makes it hard to be part of the broader engineering community.

Fast-paced, exciting

Software Engineer • Current Employee

London, England, United Kingdom

November 18, 2024

Pros: Autonomy, pace, rapidly-growing/changing, so lots of opportunity.

Cons: Exec steering can be hard to keep up with.

4.0
Fast-paced, exciting
Software Engineer • Current Employee
London, England, United Kingdom
November 18, 2024
Pros: Autonomy, pace, rapidly-growing/changing, so lots of opportunity.
Cons: Exec steering can be hard to keep up with.

One of the best (and most intense) jobs you'll ever have

Software Engineer • Former Employee

Palo Alto, California, United States

January 14, 2014

Pros: Amazingly smart coworkers and managers -- a much denser concentration of brilliant people than anywhere else I've worked. Great office perks (food, dogs, etc). Fun culture.

Cons: If you're looking for anything close to a 40-hour work-week, then Palantir probably isn't the right place for you. They expect a substantial, continuing commitment of time and energy. Expect to spend most of your waking life in the office.

4.0
One of the best (and most intense) jobs you'll ever have
Software Engineer • Former Employee
Palo Alto, California, United States
January 14, 2014
Pros: Amazingly smart coworkers and managers -- a much denser concentration of brilliant people than anywhere else I've worked. Great office perks (food, dogs, etc). Fun culture.
Cons: If you're looking for anything close to a 40-hour work-week, then Palantir probably isn't the right place for you. They expect a substantial, continuing commitment of time and energy. Expect to spend most of your waking life in the office.

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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