The recruiter reached out via InMail on LinkedIn.

A phone call with the hiring manager and a traditional Desi-type panel interview consisting of five team members, including the hiring manager, followed.

Two of the engineers did not show up to work, and the interview ended one hour earlier.

Hiring Manager: A cool guy who mostly aimed at extracting information from you in all possible ways. One of the better interview experiences in recent times.

Interviewer 1: A middle-aged guy who was obsessed with HTTP. He started with versions of HTTP and went on with headers, header format for Request, header format for Response, and whatever else he could think of related to HTTP.

Disclaimer: I wasn't able to answer most of the questions and failed to understand the obsession with all the HTTP questions. He did not ask a word apart from HTTP and walked out.

Interviewer 2: This guy attended the call remotely. He started off with HTTP stuff again. He suggested TRACEROUTE works using ICMP, but my dear brother, please revise your networking basics before interviewing. Traceroute uses UDP on a Linux machine and ICMP on a Windows machine. Now you remember who I am. :)

Interviewer 3: A decent guy who again asked me about Postman, another HTTP-related question. He also asked about IPSec and other methods.

Overall, the interview process was more focused on how a direct competitor (the company I worked for) solved issues differently, rather than what I knew and what role I played.

There were absolutely zero programming questions, no preference given to automation. I did not even write a single IF statement on the board.