Positions are "scaled". You apply / get recruited for "backend engineer" and based on your assessed technical level (by them), they'll scale it from SWE to Staff SWE.
Recruiter and recruiting coordinators are personable and engaging.
I had a nice technical phone interview. The problem was fun, but does require some exposure beforehand, so definitely not for language (Python) or web/API (JSON) newbies. Honestly, the engineer sold me on the company - something the recruiter could not.
The onsite completely failed to impress me:
* The platform team is relatively new and relatively wild west - no cohesive style or shared values.
* Words like "empathy" get dropped without any real understanding of what that is.
* 2/3 of the coding / white boarding exercises are completely divorced from what the position would actually work on - wasting time and doing a disservice to interviewees looking for a "day in the life" perspective.
* Felt like someone in a "recruiting funnel" to hit metrics and not an actual person.
Keeping working at it NW and good luck!
I applied online. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at NerdWallet (San Francisco, CA) in Jan 2020
Interview
Had an initial phone screen with recruiter. This was followed by an online coding exercise with an engineer. Finally, I was brought in for an all day, on-site interview.