The process took 2 weeks. I applied through a referral. It started with in-person intro discussions with the VP and CTO of around 1 to 1.5 hours. In the discussion, we focused on understanding the business, the kind of problems they have been solving, the team that they have built, how the right use of technology is the biggest leverage they have got in reaching their current position as a market leader, understanding my past experience, and what kind of org I was looking out for in the next assignment.

In the onsite interviews, there was 1 coding round (where the focus was on clean code and extensibility) and 2 design rounds (covering some open problems, Solr, AWS storage, and designing an app like Google Photos), followed by culture and fitment rounds with the VP and CTO. What made me join (I had my hypothesis based on these attributes) was how having a co-founder as the CTO can help in putting focus on the right areas, and their focus on having a lean team. I received some genuine feedback as well (which generally does not happen with most orgs' interview processes), alongside the kind of market position they were in and the tremendous possibilities of growth with time.

After spending some time now, I can say that my hypothesis was spot on. The engineering team is full of engineers who are experts in their areas yet humble, show a high degree of ownership, and take pride in their work and the platform we are building. We do have our share of areas to get better as well to take the company into the next orbit; we know about that and are working on it as well. The whole leadership team is very sorted out about different things.

Past experience, coding, and design questions.