I applied online. I interviewed at Neural Concept in May 2026
Interview
They gave me a problem-solving question about how I would approach a machine learning problem in a manufacturing context, focusing more on my thinking and overall approach than on getting the exact right answer.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
How would you approach an anomaly detection problem on manufacturing sensor data, and how would you decide between a deep learning approach and a simpler one?
I applied online. I interviewed at Neural Concept in Apr 2024
Interview
I applied to this position and went through 4 stages of process:
1-Coderbyte coding assignment/exam. There were 4 questions, 1 hour time. 3 problems were easy/medium. Last one was hard. But exam is easily doable.
2-Interview with HR. Asked about motivation.
3-Technical interview about applied physics and ML, and computational geometry. Pretty awkward interview. The interviewer was trying to show that his approach to the solve question was better than mine, which may be true because he designed the questions anyway. And he was not able to answer a basic question I asked at the end of interview about their models and their reliability and validity.
4-Technical interview about a coding problem. Nice interviewer. The problem was from an ICPC contest. I was able to provide a valid solution, and then I was asked to implement my solution in python in a live coding setup in the same interview. I implemented my solution and my code successfully passed their test cases.
After this last interview, my application was rejected with a pretty generic rejection message. And tbh, I don't care because I have offers from other companies and wasn't going to accept offer from NC unless the salary was well above market average, But it's weird to see getting the rejection email after a successful interview.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
What is the time complexity of your proposed solution to the coding problem?
1. Coderbyte Assessment - easy leetcode problems (some of them from blind75)
2. HR Interview - general assessment of interest and fit to role, setting of expectations regarding the presence of more custom facing, yet still technical tasks
3. Technical Interview - physics and computer graphics problems, boundary conditions on a problem solved with the navier stokes equation, a problem about filling a volume bounded by a mesh, gradient vs genetic based optimizations (very nice interviewer)
4. Technical interview - image processing problem about fitting a square inside blob shape
5. Would've been an onsite paper presentation.
Interviewer from the fourth round sadly had a disrespectful demeanor. At the start he was more interested in (unsuccessfully) asking "gotcha" questions that anonymously alluded to basic image processing concepts than to actually let me solve the problem.
Due to his overall tone when speaking to me, his choice of routing me to a problem set clearly labeled as being from a contest where his faculty ranked higher than mine - was hard not to interpret as having some sort of condescending message to it.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Given a blob shape, find the largest NxN box that can be fit inside of it. Input was a series of intervals specifying the shape of the blob.