Software Engineer Interview Experience - United Kingdom
Process
TLDR; Loads of silly questions about culture - the kind that only HR people can use to draw conclusions. Strange interviews about strange things. Open-ended questions with specific answers.
HR was very annoying. They kept trying to coach you. It's funny to see them squirm when you ask them actual questions about the interviews, and they really know nothing. I love asking HR people, who pretend to know about tech, questions about tech.
Tech side wasn't too hard - just your standard graphs (DFS, BFS, etc.). I had my interviews remotely because of COVID. The engineers either had their face on the Teams call or the question. I couldn't see both. This meant I never really had sufficient time to make sense out of the question. Most of the interviewers were being trained, so they struggled to speak to me without being pressured into using their script. This made interviews awkward and uncomfortable for all involved. Any silence or thinking can be misinterpreted as confusion, even if you are genuinely trying to formulate a reasonable answer. They are looking for very specific answers, not ingenuity or thought.
There is also a stigma against anyone who appreciates math or statistics. If they see ML on your CV, be prepared to sacrifice your soul a little and talk about how "ML is all about people" and how "bias in ML is a big problem," and all the other stuff that people say in the media who don't really understand anything about ML.
Just remember that there are many companies out there that pay more and don't waste hours of your life interviewing you. Every engineer should know about algorithms, but being able to memorize a bunch of patterns for solutions on LeetCode and rush through questions in timed conditions in a remote interview is really not a skill anyone ever needs to have.
Questions
Signed an NDA, so I can't say.
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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
Palantir's interview process for their Software Engineer roles in the United Kingdom is extremely selective, failing the vast majority of engineers.
Experience Rating
Candidates reported having very good feelings for Palantir's Software Engineer interview process in United Kingdom.
Palantir Work Experiences
- 3.0Smart People, Find Good LeadSoftware Engineer • Former EmployeePalo Alto, California, United StatesOctober 14, 2013Pros: Very smart people can learn a lot and get to work on interesting projects.Cons: Tough work/life balance. Expectations are not always communicated effectively. You need to really devote all your time to the company to feel appreciated.
- 2.0Good times are overSoftware Engineer • Former EmployeeNew York, New York, United StatesAugust 23, 2021Pros: - Still some smart people left. - Decent comp (if you joined pre-IPO). - Used to have good perks, but most of them got cut during the pandemic and with constant cost-cutting that started in advance of the IPO.Cons: Poor work-life balance. If you don't mind 24/7 on-calls and frequent "surges," this is your home. Professional growth perspectives are virtually non-existent. It's all very random and mostly luck/politics dependent. If you are "unlucky" and got assigned a crappy team/project early on, you will struggle to ever get considered for anything better. You will not learn much and just get stuck. There are few good teams, but since most others are so mediocre, you are unlikely to get into a good one, and moving "upwards" internally is very hard. It's worse if you also get a lead (Palantir term for "manager") who lacks motivation, time, or power to support you. As burnout gets more widespread, more long-timers either quit or become jaded and stop caring; the chance of getting such a manager is higher. In terms of coding, you will mostly fiddle with internal frameworks. If you are "lucky," you might get to work on something new; otherwise, expect vast legacy codebases with plenty of tech debt and support issues. Or they could put you as a "dev" on infra. Leadership is still rather inexperienced and often not sure what they are doing. They try to call it "flat structure"; in practice, there are few unofficial "power clusters," centered around people who are actually important, and their decisions are enforced. Some got this authority by merit, others just by being close to founders/directors, "tenure," or being good at office politics. The result is low transparency on decisions affecting you, wasted effort, and frequent reinventing the wheel. If you are extremely unlucky, they might put you on BD (business development). The main purpose of engineers there is to help customers use Palantir products, especially when they break (and boy, do they break often). Once you are in BD, Palantir will not let you "escape BD" until you quit.
- 5.0Great place to workSoftware Engineer • Current EmployeeLondon, England, United KingdomAugust 28, 2023Pros: Challenging place to work at.Cons: Sometimes there can be pressure to deliver.
Palantir Interview Questions
