Interview process was well-organized and sensible. On-site was heavily organized around systems design, a really reasonable (& interesting) programming problem, and collaboration and behavioral effectiveness. Offer was presented very promptly and we closed the deal same-day. 100% satisfied with my experience and excited to start work!
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
For a real-world machine learning scenario, design an end-to-end system to address the business needs with a focus on operational excellence.
Phone screen was a simple software architecture interview. The main loop consisted of four rounds: a coding round, an architecture round, a system programming, and a behavioural interview. Technical questions were domain specific. Either you know it, or you don't. The worst part? The recruiter ghosted me for 2 weeks and only replied when I followed up.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Build a multi-threaded durable KV store for a flaky persistent layer within an hour
I applied through an employee referral. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Databricks (San Francisco, CA) in Apr 2025
Interview
Got referred by a Databricks employee.
1. Initial 30 min recruiter call
2. System design technical phone interview
3. Onsite full loop interview (didn't get to that. got rejected after the phone interview)
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Design a distributed file system. Can't use any commercial blob storage like S3.
Went very deep into specific distributed system & file system mechanisms. Seems like the interviewers were interested in how the fundamentals & principles of distributed systems are applied in real design.
