I applied online. The process took 2 months.

I sent an application for the role. Here is the process and the order of steps:

• Got invited to a call with TA. Ticked off a few boxes about logistics, etc.
• Tech interview with the HM/engg. It was pleasant, and the discussion was around the role, what my current responsibilities are, and a few other basic questions.
• After the tech round, I was sent an assignment, which was fine. It was pretty time-boxed, and I had to satisfy all the requirements within a 3-hour window.
• Recruiter got back within a couple of days saying they wanted to have a tech round discussing the assignment. It was scheduled. This round had 2 engineers. I had to walk them through my code, explain and defend the choices I made, and answer follow-up questions. In the end, I got to ask a couple of questions about how they work, etc. This was fine.
• Got an email that the team liked my assignment and invited me for a final round of onsite interviews.
• Onsite: I was flown out to the Paris HQ. It had 3 rounds: First: This was a deep-dive interview where the interviewers grilled me on my previous experience. This was not so pleasant, as the interviewer kept asking for names of my previous and current managers, which I thought was weird. There was some pushback towards me about my experience from 4 years ago, and they kept asking me what my responsibilities were back then. Second: Values round. The expectation here was that I align with their values. This felt very scripted, and they focused on questions like "tell me about a time when you had a conflict", etc. This round was OK. Third: CTO round. The focus was about getting to know what I had done in my current role and why I was looking to join Photoroom.

Overall, it was a pretty average experience. I finally got rejected after almost 3 weeks due to the holiday season. The reason was that they couldn't get visibility into my job-related activities in my previous experience from 4 years ago.

The technical questions were around Triton Inference Server and model optimisation techniques.

Behavioral questions:

• Tell me about a time you received feedback.
• Tell me about a time you shared feedback with someone above you.
• Tell me about a time you stepped outside your job description to make something succeed.
• Tell me about a time you made progress when goals or requirements were unclear.
• When did you ship fast? Did it fail? What were the key learnings?