I started with a recruiter call, followed by a very nice technical/behavioral chat with a team lead. I loved everything about it and felt very confident afterward. I received a positive response and was asked to complete a take-home assignment. The assignment was essentially an internal feature to test VPN speed, using Docker containers, logging, and including both unit and integration tests. A red flag appeared right away—and they seemed aware of it, as they noted at the top that it may seem like free work, but reassured me it wasn’t, since they already had it implemented internally. The whole task took me five full days to complete. After submitting it via GitHub, I noticed around 10 people cloned the repository. Then, I heard nothing. A week later, I followed up with the recruiter asking for feedback. She set a deadline for a response but missed it. I reached out again and was told, truth be told, I should probably look elsewhere because the role might be redundant—but that they still hadn’t reviewed my task. I replied that I had spent significant time on the assignment and would like feedback regardless. The next day, I received a cheery email saying they really liked my solution and were happy to move forward with the final round—however, the offer would be on hold until they got the green light for the role. I asked them to notify me when that happens. That was two weeks ago. A few days ago, I saw they reposted the job on LinkedIn and are actively recruiting for it. I messaged the recruiter asking for an update. I haven’t heard anything back.

ExpressVPN's interviews test on stuff it values, and on stuff that actually matters. The first round, unofficial round is a chat with the recruiter / HR, and kind of get to know you. The second round is a live coding test done in the form of pair programming (and with TDD). The third round is a system design round. The fourth round is a behavioural round. The fifth round is a take home assignment.