I applied through a recruiter. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Databricks (San Francisco, CA) in Oct 2019
Interview
First, I get reached out by the recruiter and the initial phone screen was 20-30 minutes long. I made it pretty clear why I was looking for a job.
Then I had a technical phone screen with the interview. I did complete the question within 30 minuted. But still there was time left, so the interview asked me to write the iterative version of the solution although I did explain that there will be no improvement in time/space complexity but still on insisting I wrote the iterative solution.
Then I hear back from the interview that I did clear the interview and a couple of teams are interested in my profile and one of the managers would like to talk to me before the onsite interview. So I thought it is just an informal call with the manager and so did the recruiter mentioned it. Turns out it is was a managerial round where I was asked what I have been doing for the past 1 year why I am looking for a job. Well, I did explain and answer all the questions and then he happens to explain to me different teams in the data bricks.
To my shock the next day I get a rejection mail. When I contact the recruiter asking how come I am seeing a rejection now when I was supposed to be done onsite and the call with the manager was informal. She explains saying it was informal but the manager liked to deep dive whether I am suited for an onsite interview. This is the most horrible experience I had in an interview where I was told we will soon be scheduling onsite and then being told I am rejected based on an informal call? Although from the beginning itself during the first 30 minutes call I have clearly explained why I am looking for a job. I would not interview with data bricks again in my life
The Databricks interview is notoriously tough and they absolutely live up to that reputation. The process moved quickly but the technical bar is incredibly high. They do not care how fast you can solve a generic LeetCode puzzle. They want to see if you understand memory management, distributed state, and thread safety. The virtual onsite had a mix of deep system architecture and a heavy live coding session where you actually have to compile, run, and debug your code.
I applied through a recruiter. I interviewed at Databricks
Interview
Screening round was a system design question.
Did not make it through. I do think for such an involved question, the interviewer spent a bit too long explaining the question at the beginning and didn't leave enough time for me to implement the solution. But that was probably not the reason for not passing.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Standard system design question. Practice with Hello Interview or similar site.
I applied through a recruiter. The process took 3 months. I interviewed at Databricks
Interview
Interview consisted of 5 rounds: 2 system design (single box and distributed), 1 coding and 2 behavioral and personal deep dive. Overall the experience was pretty good. The interviewers were nice, seemed to pay all attention, and all of them were really smart and fun to talk to.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Coding was not a typical leetcode style, instead it was a generic problem, which could be tacked on with follow ups like better structuring, modularity etc. Single box design focussed on concurrency, reliability and crash recovery. The discussion on past projects was extremely detailed and technical. The system design question seemed too focussed on the domain rather than one of the standard distributed design questions.
