I applied online. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Akamai in Oct 2016
Interview
The first "technical" telephonic round interview was just a formality. I went ahead to see what else they have to ask in next rounds and majorly for testing the waters.
Come the presentation round and It was 10 minutes past the time set for the interview as I'll see someone relevant to the Interview that evening. The overall process gives one clear sense of them expecting you to be a robot. Most of the questions were never about how you approach the problem and no check on your thought process as to why a particular thing is done the way it is, and made it to the RFC. The sheer reliance only on a standard published RFC and expecting someone to rote-learn every word of it and keep on chanting it for years to come and stay "relevant" gives me jitters.
The presentation is a good way of them making sure you prepare, So I did. The interviewers were not interested in anything you have to say other than chanting the static RFCs and some goggly questions which you can make your way through if you think logically. I agree this profile might not need anyone good with programming syntaxes but how could someone ignore the basic programming paradigms which helped shape design principals implemented by the servers following the RFC today, A straight out NO on any discussion of programming paradigm simply tells either they are unaware of it or really don't care about them.
Working under this job profile must be very much like using the API and who cares about the implementation/design constraint which compelled the APIs to change in the past, you just go ahead and use the API haha.
I would like to thank the panel for their time and letting me know that "Someone from the HR will get back to me". I am glad no one has come back with a feedback, What else to expect from a company initiating a robot search initiated by yet another robot.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
No one will ask about the basic C10K problem and how the servers resolves them, Just read through the RFC and you will become an architect if you have 4+ years in your resume.
Since I don't care at all about money, I asked for the exact same salary I currently earn, instead of asking for 20% more than my current salary, which is what literally everybody does.
The recruiter accused me of thinking only about money and made clear no assessment of my skills would have been performed in order to establish if I'm worth that salary or not.
The day after I got an email stating that I was not selected.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Salary expectations in terms of gross salary per month
First round: 30 min HR - quick presentation of myself and description of the role
Second: 1h with the hiring manager - open discussion
Third: Technical interview 30min - list of questions to answer with no feedback from the interviewer
No feedback at the end of the process for more than a month
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Technical questions about Network components, Cloud architecture, Security, CDN...
I applied through an employee referral. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Akamai in Mar 2024
Interview
First round is a screening by in-house recruiter, second round consists of an interview with a manager and technical interview with someone who's currently in the same (or similar) role. Final round is a presentation for a group of Akamai representatives.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Behavioral questions about how you get to an understanding of the pains and challenges of a customer or prospect as well as a broad range of technical questions relating to architecting solutions.