The interview process consisted of three main stages:

• A take-home coding screen, which featured two easy/medium HackerRank questions. This was self-paced, but candidates had one hour to complete both.
• A follow-up interview with a director to get a basic feel for the role's expectations.
• The final round, which comprised four interviews that delved deeper into coding skills, system design, security, and networking.

I had a coding project I'd worked on independently in my off-time, and I got to demo it for some of my interviewers. I think it really helped me make an impression and stand out above the competition.

That said, my interview was for a Lead Software Engineer position, and the offer ended up being for a Senior position, one level lower than Lead. The reasoning was that although my computer science fundamentals were solid, I needed to gain some hands-on experience with security at scale.

It was about two weeks from when I applied to when all my interviews were finished. Then, it took another three weeks to hear back, due in part to holidays and out-of-office absences.

My interviewer brought up a project I mentioned on my resume and asked me to describe how it was architected from a system design standpoint.

Then, he asked me why certain components were chosen instead of others, and how I would implement security around an existing design that was improperly secured.