After being contacted by a recruiter and recommended for the position, the alignment process took approximately a month. The interview itself was scheduled quite late in November, considering the role was set to start in January.

This application was unique in that I did not apply directly; instead, I was discovered by the recruiter through the company’s website. As a result, I bypassed the typical three rounds of interviews and proceeded directly to a discussion with an engineer who had extensive experience working on the system.

The interview lasted about an hour and was not particularly technical. It primarily focused on a high-level overview of the new plants the team was working on and a breakdown of the role and team structure.

The explanation of the role and its responsibilities took up about 30 minutes. During this time, I shared as many relevant personal experiences as I could.

At the time, my experience included constructing state observers and conducting system identification for thermal systems. However, I had not yet had the opportunity to control such a system directly. While my theoretical knowledge was solid, I felt I might have been a bit too inexperienced for the position.

Describe a time in which you constructed a thermal resistor network model that included nonlinearities and controlled it. How many nodes were in your network?