I applied through a staffing agency. The process took 6 weeks. I interviewed at Palantir Technologies (Palo Alto, CA) in Nov 2012
Interview
A headhunter contacted me inviting me to apply to Palantir. I was interested in a customer-facing role as either a forward deployed engineer or an embedded analyst. After spending some time brushing up on CS fundamentals, I began the interview process. Here's how it went:
Interview #1: Technical interview with someone who didn't properly introduce himself nor tell me about his role at Palantir. He asked me to write a function which computes modulus of two numbers without using divide or shift. Finally at the end, he gave me a chance for questions, and so I asked him: "What's your name & what do you do at Palantir?" I was not impressed by the interviewer's total lack of interviewing skill. He apparently was not impressed by my coding.
Interview #2: To evaluate my suitability as an embedded analyst, they invited me for a problem-solving interview. This interviewer was much better and took some time to get to know me & let me ask questions. Apparently, though, he had to run to a meeting & the interview ended after 20 minutes, with no problem-solving. This was disappointing.
Interview #3: No show. I waited 20 minutes, then called the recruiter to withdraw my application at Palantir.
in my experience, the interview process at this company shows a total lack of respect for an applicant's time.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Describe a problem you would like to solve using Palantir technology.
I interviewed at Palantir Technologies (New York, NY)
Interview
I directly gave the technical interview, which was about 50 minutes long. The interviewer was nice, and the interview itself felt collaborative, where I could ask questions and share various problem-solving approaches.
I applied through an employee referral. I interviewed at Palantir Technologies
Interview
I applied with a referral
Multiple rounds -
1. HR screen
2. decomposition round
3. onsite with 3 interviews (coding, learning, and decomposition)
4. hiring manager (didn't make it past this one)
Took them about 5 weeks after the hiring manager round to update me that I wasn't selected
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
The hiring manager round got really deep into my career motivations
I had behavioral interviews and then 4 in person interviews. The behavioral was straightforward. There was also a data query interview where they taught you a new "language" and had you execute basic queries in it. Then there was a system design interview. I had two of these. The last one they asked me if I was deployed to the moon to identify new species of alien what kind of system would I build.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
If you were deployed to the moon to identify new species of alien what kind of system would I build.
Forward Deployed Engineer applicants have rated the interview process at Palantir Technologies with 3.4 out of 5 (where 5 is the highest level of difficulty) and assessed their interview experience as 60% positive. To compare, the company-average is 46.4% positive. This is according to Glassdoor user ratings.
Candidates applying for Forward Deployed Engineer roles take an average of 28 days to get hired, when considering 150 user submitted interviews for this role. To compare, the hiring process at Palantir Technologies overall takes an average of 28 days.
Common stages of the interview process at Palantir Technologies as a Forward Deployed Engineer according to 150 Glassdoor interviews include:
Phone interview: 39%
One on one interview: 27%
Skills test: 18%
Personality test: 5%
Presentation: 4%
Group panel interview: 3%
Background check: 3%
IQ intelligence test: 1%
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