I applied through a recruiter. The process took 5 weeks. I interviewed at Palantir Technologies (London, England) in Oct 2013
Interview
8 interviews in total.
1 phone interview - basic programming questions to test my ability to program simple algorithms. Why do I like Python and Haskell, what's the difference between the languages. Asked me to expand on what static typing was vs. dynamic typing. Why would I use a hash map vs. a linked list?
3 on-site interviews in the London office - one algorithm design in Java, one general numbers and thought processes and one paired-programming type interview).
1 on-site interview with the head of the London office - general character questions, why I want to work for Palantir and similar styled questions. One brain-teaser which I couldn't immediately solved but worked through it with some prompting.
3 on-site interviews in the Palo-Alto offices, flown out over the weekend. Lunch and hotels provided! Palantir-themed system design question, followed by coding/data-structure question, followed by a data-structure/API-design question.
One guy brought his dog into the interview - so cute!
Was then sent home with promise of an interview with one of the cofounders.
Overall very positive interview process! Lovely people and lovely offices.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
How much water flows under London Bridge in 24 hours?
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 46.3% 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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