I applied online. The process took 5 weeks.

The recruiter reached out for a 30-minute interview, normal as one can expect for an initial recruiter interview. One day after the recruiter interview, I was given a take-home examination on HackerRank. I took 4 days to complete it. It took 2 to 4 hours and was simple. It dealt with C++ and kinematics/trigonometry. Two days later, I was referred for an interview with the hiring manager 4 days later on a Friday. The hiring manager interview went fine, covering general background and what you've worked on. On Monday, I was asked to fill out a clearance questionnaire and a demographic survey. Two days later, the clearance team called to verify information and active clearance. Then, a week later, I was scheduled for a final in-person on-site interview.

The interview is 4 phases and 4 hours. You have to fill out an NDA and a visitor form beforehand. You're asked to prepare a presentation about prior project experience, and engineers ask questions about it. The other phases are values, teamwork, and technical.

• Values: Introduce yourself, explain what shield values mean to you, and why you chose shield ai.
• Teamwork: What do you do when working with someone difficult, when were you wrong before, what is the best team you've worked on and why, what is the worst team and why, and what is the most difficult feedback to hear from someone?
• Technical: What is code quality to you? There was absolutely nothing technical here, not an examination, just casual situational/experiential questions.

Parking at DC is bad. Their garage has a 5'5" maximum, so I had to park at another parking garage for $22. I was told they'd try to cover the cost at my final block (values) but never heard back about it.

The feedback was that the team wanted someone with more technical depth and that the recruiter might keep in touch next year. The final interview was on Thursday, and the feedback was on Friday, although I was initially told to expect feedback on Monday or Tuesday. Maybe it was a hard call because they liked me, and I thought I did very well at all phases and that it was very casual. I'm not sure where the feedback that I lacked technical depth comes from. I didn't get that impression during the interviews, and it wasn't suggested to me that I was missing some part of their software stack in my experience. I'm not sure where the feedback came from, but it's their decision. I'm happy to have gone through the experience.

I wonder if there was a way beforehand not to require me to spend roughly 16 hours across the whole process, just to be told in the end that they think I lacked technical depth. Maybe they should have dived deeper during the 4 hours in-person. Again, it was not conveyed during the 4 hours that I might lack the required depth. If that wasn't conveyed during the in-person, it must come from something outside of the interview, like the resume or years of experience. If that's the case, then maybe the interviews should never have happened, and we all could have saved ourselves time. That's why it's neutral. It was a nice experience seeing the process, but I'm left wondering if they were right to take me through the process just to say in the end, for some reason, that I lacked technical depth.

Teamwork: what do you do when working with someone difficult, when were you wrong before, what is the best team you've worked on and why, what is the worst team and why, and what was the most difficult feedback to hear from someone?

Technical: what is code quality to you? There was absolutely nothing technical here, not an examination; it's just casual situational and experiential questions.

Values: introduce yourself, explain what shield values mean to you, and why you are interested in Shield AI.