I applied online and also emailed one of Pinterest's recruiters to express my excitement for the opportunity.

A couple of weeks later, a recruiter sent me a code challenge, which I submitted. A couple of weeks after that, they scheduled me for a technical phone screen.

I passed the phone screen and then went in for an onsite interview. The onsite interview consisted of meeting three engineers from the team I was interviewing for and answering three different whiteboard questions.

Prior to the interview, I was told I would be able to use either the whiteboard or a laptop they would provide. There was a laptop present, but it was not set up. My interviewers seemed more comfortable using the whiteboard, so we primarily whiteboarded, and I used my personal laptop for writing out some code.

I had lunch there with another apprentice engineer and then left. Overall, it was a very positive experience. The recruiting team sent detailed information at every step of the interview, letting me know exactly what to expect.

(Architectural question)

How would you design a Minesweeper game?

Specifically, what kinds of data structures and functions would you need, and what kinds of data would you need to keep track of?