I interviewed for a Staff Software Engineer position for the Vancouver location. The process included three interviews: the Hiring Manager Round, a General Tech/Coding Interview with a Staff Engineer, and a System Design Round.
The Hiring Manager interview and the Coding/Tech Knowledge interview were great experiences. The interviewers had the right experience and asked relevant questions.
However, I had a very disappointing experience with the final round, which was the System Design interview. Despite interviewing for a Staff Software Engineer position, the interview was led by a "Software Engineer 2," with two other engineers present. The interviewers lacked experience in designing microservices and did not know what relevant questions to ask or how to conduct a system design interview. They asked zero questions related to high-level design, scaling the system, or diving deep into specific components. Instead, they focused solely on implementing code from a front-end manipulation perspective.
Advice to the Company:
For Staff Software Engineer interviews, ensure that interviewers are of the same level or higher. The Staff Software Engineer position is more of a leadership role that involves handling ambiguity and complexities. It is crucial that the interviewers can appropriately evaluate candidates on these aspects.