NOTE: As per HR, there are only two levels in Software: Software Engineer and Principal Software Engineer.

I applied online. Following rounds:

• 30 minutes with Hiring Manager
• Approximately 1 hour coding interview
• Approximately 1 hour design interview
• 30 minutes product sense

I received the rejection email here, but they had two more rounds:

• Behavioral
• Conclusive round with Hiring Manager

The first round with the Hiring Manager was informal, focusing on my past experience and details about the job vacancy. The coding round was easy; it was simply a log-parsing task and did not require prior LeetCode practice.

The design round is where I believe I was eliminated. The problem statement was fairly simple: "Design a REST API for ML model" (using the LucidSpark drawing tool). However, the expectations were not obvious. The interview was not conducted as a standard design interview. I should have researched the interviewer's background more and focused on those areas.

I noticed that another candidate received a positive offer during the same time window when I interviewed. This candidate used a slide deck (instead of LucidSpark) for the design round. This was a better approach, as it would have given me more control over the discussion instead of letting the interviewer drive it.

Product sense was like a regular product-sense interview: What can you improve, or what feature would you add, how would you measure the success of your proposed ideas, etc.

Overall, my experience was positive. Assuming the Design Interview results were the cause of rejection, I still believe I should have prepared better, not for the design part, but for the "human-interview" part. They are a startup, and the interviewers may have their own quirks; thorough preparation is advised.

It was a sad day; I really needed this job and I feel that I could have passed their evaluation criteria. Good luck to all other folks interviewing with them. This company has a good opportunity ahead if they play their cards right.

Coding:

Write a function that parses user action logs. (Answer is easy once you understand what is being logged. Solution uses Trie)

Design:

An API to serve livestream rankings to the client application.

Product Sense:

Is generic, but would mostly be around what to improve or add on the Whatnot app/service.