I applied online. The process took 6 weeks. I interviewed at SpaceX in Feb 2016
Interview
I heard back from them a month after applying.
The first step is an online C/C++ quiz where you look at snippets of code and try to determine if there is a problem (off by one, infinite loops, etc) or if the code is good.
After that you get a phone interview from someone who is likely not a programmer. They have a list of questions and want to hear maybe a 2 sentence answer to write down. This person is not interested in hearing examples or thinking process. It's essentially a pop quiz that gets passed to an engineer afterwards for grading. Unfortunately this method provides little to no feedback. During other interviews with companies, I'd be talking to an engineer and so if I struggled a bit we would work through it together. Here you'll just get stuck and likely fail.
If you pass that, which I didn't, the next step is a 1 hour phone interview with an engineer.
After that, a 6 hour coding challenge in a screensharing environment so that an engineer can watch you code. This is presumably so that you can't blatantly copy and paste stuff from github or stack overflow.
Then there's the onsite interview.
Interview questions [3]
Question 1
List all of the sorting algorithms you know and their complexities.
Applied online has two round. First being an phone call with recruiter and the second being online with a team of engineer asked about my previous experience and then had a short coding leetcode style question
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Explain a recent debugging problem and how you solved it.
Basic questions about python vs c++, am I authorized to work in the US, stack vs heap, projects and my experience mentioned in my resume, quick introduction about myself and why i wish to work at spacex.
Recruiter screens usually hit: time/space complexity of common operations, why O(log n) beats O(n), array vs hash map vs linked list tradeoffs, and Big-O of sorting. Want me to drill you on these?
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
recruiter called, they has a few big O questions and basic DSA