I had 3 calls: HR screen, ML system design, and a final interview.
Also, I had 1 coding test. The coding test was very basic and I consider it extremely non-relevant to the position.
Call 1 was smooth.
Call 2 was kinda blurry. The Head of ML asked me questions I had already answered. The questions were basic for a system design interview, and I didn't feel that the interviewer had a full picture of the system they are building.
At the last stage, I met with the VP of Engineering. At the beginning of the interview, he said that “this will be a soft-skills call, not a technical one.” Later, he asked questions like “how would you design such an ML system, what metrics would you use, what bottlenecks could you see.” He could have simply avoided saying that this was a “soft-skills” interview.
So I spent quite some time in the process and got a rejection from the recruiter with an explicit mention that they wouldn't share any detailed feedback. They literally refused to share anything with late-stage candidates. One of the worst experiences in my job search career. I don’t recommend engaging with this company.
Overall, the ML team looks very junior, with no production pipelines. Irrelevant coding test, basic ML system design, hypocritical VP of Engineering, no feedback at all.