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Interview experiences
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Interview experiences · Databricks
Databricks Senior Software Engineer Interview Experience — Rejected Same Day Despite a Smooth BFS Solution
The interviewer was a Senior engineer, and he was 5 minutes late. He started off explaining what his team does — since this was a direct match on background with an infra team, I spent about 3-5 minutes introducing what I used to do on my previous team, and he asked me one question about it. After this intro segment, there was about 45 minutes left. The actual interview started. It was a known qu…
Interview experiences · Databricks
Databricks Senior Software Engineer Interview Experience — Strong-Hire Feedback, Rejected at the Hiring Committee
I just got the update — rejected at HC. I really can't help venting about this: they set expectations so high and then tell you you got rejected at the hiring committee stage. I was interviewing for a senior fullstack role. Phone screen was mid-June — the classic high-frequency anagram LeetCode question. I finished in 20 minutes, wrote my own test, and as soon as it passed, that was it — call ove…
Interview experiences · Databricks
Databricks Senior+ Software Engineer Interview Experience — Seven Rounds, Batch Write Three Times, No Offer
Databricks AI platform team, Staff level. I reached out to the hiring manager directly on my own and got the interview that way — it went straight to the VO (virtual onsite), skipping the phone screen. The initial loop was 5 rounds, then they added 2 more rounds afterward, and I still got rejected. I think I answered well. This is just how Databricks is — they don't really seem to have much since…
Interview experiences · Databricks
Databricks Software Engineer Interview Experience — A Sliding Window String Question in Tech Screening
I recently interviewed for a tech screening at Databricks — a string-related question that comes up a lot on the forum. The question itself was fairly simple, and I hope it helps whoever interviews after me. The question was roughly: given a longer string and a shorter pattern, find the earliest contiguous substring in the long string such that the substring contains exactly the same characters a…
Interview experiences · Databricks
Databricks Software Engineer Interview Experience — A Snapshot Set Iterator and an Interviewer Who Wouldn't Stop Interfering
Snapshot set iterator — the problem said the return order didn't matter. After I said I needed two data structures — a list of logs and a dict — and laid out my rough approach, the interviewer asked if I had another way to do it. Then he suggested that instead of one shared logs list for all keys, it could just be a dict where each key has its own logs, rather than all keys sharing one list of lo…
Interview experiences · Databricks
Databricks Software Engineer Interview Experience — Cleared the Full Onsite, Then Rejected After a Messy Reference-Check Saga
Phone screen: system design — design a music playlist. The recruiter told me it would be a full-stack SD round with front-end code and everything, so I spent a long time brushing up on React, but it turned out to just be a normal SD round with no front-end content at all. My answer was pretty average. The interviewer seemed nice but looked exhausted the whole time — not sure if he was just overwo…
Interview experiences · Databricks
Databricks Software Engineer Interview Experience — Design a Hit Counter in a Key-Value Store
The interviewer emphasized that he wanted me to focus on analyzing my decisions and writing high quality code, etc. The question was: design a hit counter in a key-value store. But it wasn't stated that directly at first — the interviewer built up the requirements step by step. Design a key-value store -> asked me to think about the user experience I said I'd use generics, but in the middle I mad…
Interview experiences · Databricks
Databricks Software Engineer Interview Experience — Game Logic, Referral Credits, and Chat Design
The report describes two coding sessions and a chat-system design discussion in a Databricks onsite. One coding exercise involved a turn-based board game, including player switching, board output, and correctly ending wins or draws. Its follow-up introduced automated play. The other exercise tracked account credits associated with referrals, queried accounts meeting a threshold, and extended cred…
Interview experiences · Databricks
Databricks Software Engineer Interview Experience — Hit Counter Question, Rejected Over an Edge Case
The question was hit counter. This question isn't very clearly documented on the boards in terms of the exact requirements and follow-ups, so let me share what I remember as a reference. They started by giving 3 APIs and said I could ask clarifying questions: put(key, value) get(key) get_load() # this gets the QPS for get and put separately — I actually wrote two separate ones for each The requir…
Interview experiences · Databricks
Databricks Software Engineer Interview Experience — Passed the Phone Screen, Tripped Up by an Unusual System Programming Onsite Round
I got rejected. Overall the interviewers were all pretty nice, the whole process moved fast, and HR replied quickly too (feels like the grind-heavy companies all reply fast). It's just that they kept using the word "smart" — coworkers are all smart, they only hire smart people. I just wanted nice coworkers; "smart" doesn't really appeal to me at all, it actually made me feel some pressure. It fel…
Interview experiences · Databricks
Databricks Software Engineer Interview Experience — Passed Two Screens, Stuck on No Headcount
I had two phone interviews (technical screens). Round 1 was probably a new question from the interviewer — really hard. Given a set of node groups (e.g. [[1],[2,3],[4,5,6]]), connect all the groups into one connected graph. The way to connect: pick one node at random from each of two different groups and build an edge between them. The final graph needs to be connected, using the minimum number o…
Interview experiences · Databricks
Databricks Software Engineer Interview Experience — Stumped by a 'Fibonacci Tree' Path Question in the Technical Screen
I'd ground the recent high-frequency questions down to nothing, and then they hit me with an old, unprepared-for question: find path within Fibonacci tree. The problem doesn't give you a node structure, and you're not even allowed to write your own. The input is order: int, start: int, end: int. Find the shortest path from start to end. Right away I explained a brute force approach, and the inter…
Interview experiences · Databricks
Databricks Solutions Architect Interview Experience — Behavioral, Technical Screen, and a Week-Long CodeSignal Assessment
A while back, a recruiter from Databricks reached out about a Solutions Architect position. Since it had some relevance to my background, I figured I'd interview for it and give it a shot, so I wanted to share my fresh-off-the-press interview notes with everyone — hope this helps. The first round was a behavioral interview with the hiring manager, mainly talking about my past experience along wit…
Interview experiences · Datadog
Datadog Account Executive interview: clear recruiter guidance with an uneven panel
The recruiter reached out and was helpful and transparent throughout. Before I spoke with a hiring team, I received a PDF explaining each stage and what I needed to prepare. That made the process predictable, and I did not feel as though I was guessing what would happen next. After the recruiter call, the process followed a standard pattern: an early phone or screening stage and then video interv…
Interview experiences · Datadog
Datadog Account Executive interview: sales process and a mock cold call
The process felt organized from the beginning. I started with a recruiter conversation and then met hiring leaders. In those calls, it seemed they were comparing my experience with what they needed in an Account Executive: my approach to sales, how I described my impact and how well that experience would translate to their environment. The hiring-manager questions were more pointed. I explained m…
Interview experiences · Datadog
Datadog Senior+ Software Engineer Interview Experience — Reviewing an AI-Assisted Batching PR
In the code review round, I was given a pull request for an issue where a Python application was crashing under heavy load. The pull request changed the existing synchronous processor, which handled one request at a time, into a batched processor that handled 40 requests at a time. The repository still included the synchronous processor as a reference. However, if creation of the batched processo…
Interview experiences · Datadog
Datadog Software Engineer HackerRank and final technical interview
The process felt smooth and standard. It began with a HackerRank-style online test containing two LeetCode-like questions. Next came a roughly half-hour recruiter call focused on fit and the usual recruiter topics. The final technical stage lasted about an hour. It included more medium-hard LeetCode-style questions and a separate behavioral and HR block within the overall stage. The recruiter and…
Interview experiences · Datadog
Datadog Software Engineer Interview Experience: manager roleplay after recruiter screen
I applied through the job portal and a recruiter contacted me for a brief video call about my background, salary expectations, and basic fit. The next stage was more detailed: I met with two managers who dug into my experience. Near the end of that discussion, they switched to a practical roleplay scenario to test my hands on skills. It was direct and focused on what I could do rather than only w…
Interview experiences · Datadog
Datadog Software Engineer Interview Experience — Matching Queries Against a Log Stream
The first-round problem was query and log stream matching. I was given a stream containing two message types: Q: xxx was a query. Each query needed a unique ID, and I had to output an acknowledgment. L: xxx was a log. For each log, I had to output the IDs of all queries that it completely matched. The example input was: The expected output was: My approach was to use a HashMap<String, List<Intege…
Interview experiences · Datadog
Datadog Solutions Engineer Interview Experience: Deep technical final stage
I went through a standard multi-round Solutions Engineer process. It opened with an English-language HR conversation about who I was, whether I knew Datadog, and my salary expectations. Next came an online HackerRank test with prompts on SQL, Linux, containers, APIs, and installing and setting up a Datadog agent. I then met the hiring manager for behavioral questions with some technical content b…
Interview experiences · Datadog
Datadog Solutions Engineer interview: presentation cancelled after the role was filled
I reached the presentation stage after initial screens and a HackerRank assessment. It was due to be in person, and I put considerable effort into preparing something I felt confident presenting. Late the day before, a message said the role had already been filled and I didn't need to come in. The timing felt awful after all the preparation I'd done that week. Later, HR said they appreciated my p…
Interview experiences · Datavant
Datavant Software Engineer, debugging a few-hundred-line codebase
I went through a focused process centered on debugging. It began with a recruiter screen and then moved to a technical round where I had to debug an existing codebase. In the setup I saw, it was on the order of a few hundred lines and included multiple nested classes. The expectation was straightforward, step-by-step debugging: I worked through the code until the tests passed. I made good progres…
Interview experiences · Datavant
Datavant Software Engineer interview: CSV debugging and a 2.5-hour virtual onsite
A friendly recruiter started the process and explained each step during the call and in follow-up emails. The interviewers used CoderPad, and I appreciated that the process felt structured and respectful. The 45-minute technical screen focused on debugging. I worked with code that loaded and modified data from a CSV, then worked through failing test cases until they passed. After that, I had a hi…
Interview experiences · Datavant
Datavant Software Engineer interview: debugging, coding, and system design
The process started with recruiter outreach. After a quick call about logistics and my background, I was invited to a coding round that focused entirely on debugging. We worked with a pre-existing file, and I passed that round, which moved me to an interview with the hiring manager. The manager was easy-going and spent real time answering my questions. They seemed distracted at the beginning beca…