The head of recruiting reached out to me because he had received my resume from a friend. He said my background was perfect and set up an interview with the head of HR.

We met a week later and discussed the position, salary, and benefits. She described the position to me and said there were four spots. One had been filled internally, and they were making an offer that week to another candidate. The technical position was remote and involved working with POS developers to implement the new PayPal pay-by-phone product. She set up my next interview for the following week with the head of the program. She also stated she would be in touch with me at all times. She was very congenial and easy to talk to.

Interview #1: Highly technical. I also felt he knew much more about me and my background than what was on my resume. I had to describe debit key injection and End-to-End Encryption architecture, as well as its purpose. I was also asked if I'd ever worked with BASE-24 and Canadian switches. In addition to these, I had to give an in-depth architectural overview of my former software portfolio. I answered all of these correctly. At the end, he told me I was too technical but wanted to speak with another colleague. Before we hung up, he asked if I had ever worked on Tier 1 retail implementations and to describe their pain points in sixty seconds. I did, and he agreed with what I brought up.

The Head of HR checked in later that day and said things must have gone well; she set up my next interview.

Interview #2: This interview lasted only fifteen minutes. He focused on End-to-End Encryption. I asked if I should view this project as e-commerce moving to brick-and-mortar, and he said yes.

I followed up with HR and never heard back.

I do know who was getting the offer letter they mentioned. This explains why I was "too technical."

How does end-to-end encryption work?