I applied through a recruiter. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Palantir Technologies in Oct 2013
Interview
Recruiter reached out to me via linkedin. Palantir scheduled a phone screen which consisted of a few online coding problems. About a week later they called to bring me to McLean to interview for a forward deployed engineer position.
Onsite interview was as expected. Palantir seems to really push the startup culture so it feels like a frat house when you walk in (e.g. people on razor scooters rolling by). Had three technical interviews with questions varying from explain what a browser does under the hood, build a min sorted stack, parse a large data file for searching and build a relational database for a given problem.
Interviewers were a bit unprepared (one hadn't seen my resume) but overall they're looking for top talent. If you botch a question or aren't on your game subsequent interviews seem less interested. I did not receive an offer and received no feedback as to why (unfortunately this is normal)
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
If you didn't have to work and could do anything you wanted, what would you do?
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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