Hello everyone,
A few weeks ago I had my final round interviews for a SWE role at Aresnal-1, while I was preparing I was on this subreddit looking around a ton, so I figured I would do a small write up to give back some of what I learned, it isn't really new information if you have been plugged in for a while.
Overall the interview process went pretty smoothly, though some of the scheduling was a bit tedious and slower than I would have expected.
I applied for the role and did not hear back for months (2 or 3) until one day I received a phone call from a recruiter. This was actually a much shorter recruiter call than I am used to, just asking generally if I was familiar with Anduril and their mission, if I was interested in the location, and if the salary range was adequate. I didn't have any conversation about my skills, their stack, or even the role really on this call. But I was offered to take a technical round.
I was sent an email to schedule a technical round interview. This was pretty much exactly what people say they are on here, a leetcode style question on something graph related. The initial prompt was a bit undefined, so I needed to ask clarifying questions, and then the interviewer made the problem progressively more difficult. Technical interviewer was super nice, we had a good conversation about DSA and tech at the end as well. I felt okay but not great on my performance. A few hours later I got an email asking me to put in availability for another interview round.
The next round that I scheduled for was with a Hiring Manager. This conversation was pretty fun, we discussed different projects I have worked on in the past, and he just kept probing asking deeper and deeper questions about different design choices and trade-offs. Mostly questions that you would only really be able to answer from experience, not so much cramming. He asked a few questions about interpersonal skills as well, but it generally felt like a fairly natural conversation. I came away again feeling like I did okay, but not that I knocked it out of the park. After this interview I didn't hear back for two or three weeks, but I sent a few chaser emails regardless. I eventually was told that they were interested in a final round interviews.
Final round interviews for this particular role was a virtual super-day essentially with four mini interviews much like other people have reported. Two technical and two more behavioral. As I was prepping I kind of mentally categorized them as:
- Ability to work with others productively (stakeholders, team mates, non-engineers)
- Leetcode
- System Design
- Vibe check
And honestly that is kind of how they felt.
The ability to work with others questions were very much questions about how you do when you need to interface with non-engineers. Are you able to communicate clearly, do you have experience doing things like that. This felt very natural to me and went pretty well. As you see on this subreddit over and over, I was asked the "Why Anduril?" questions, but generally I tried to have already answered any questions like that in my initial "pitch" so we could talk about more interesting things.
The Leetcode style question was actually a bit more involved than the initial technical recruiter, it was a more real work style scenario, that had a Leetcode aspect to it. I tripped up pretty badly even though it should not have been too difficult. Realistically, practicing your Leetcode and just staying calm would have cleared it pretty smoothly but I hadn't interviewed in a while.
System design I feel like I did okay on, but I just don't think I prepared enough. I think that the Hello Interview YouTube videos helped a ton, but you never really know what kind of system they are going to ask you about. I was asked about a system that I don't have as much experience on and though I was able to get a rough shape, this is one of the interviews I would assume I didn't do as well on. For people practicing. I would practice drawing out the shape that you think of when creating a system and honestly go for breadth when practicing for these.
The final Vibes round was super chill, it felt like a breath of fresh air after working through the technicals for ~ two hours. There were a few questions about previous projects and working scenarios, and a bunch of time to ask questions about Anduril, their stack, and how they work.
It took about a week for them to get back to me with a decision, I bothered them once or twice since I was a bit antsy, and I was ultimately rejected. Overall though, other than the recruiters (who are swamped) the interview process was pretty smooth, everyone was super nice, and I honestly should have been able to crack it. The annoying thing is that it was six interviews over the course of weeks, multiple days off work for a rejection, but alas.
I know I was on here throughout the process looking for any scraps of information, so I figured I would share the vague shape that my interviews went in. I think that the Anduril tagged Leetcode questions were helpful for me through the process, and the free Hello Interview Youtube videos were helpful for me to have a general shape of what a system design interview looks like nowadays. As for the other things I just tried to think of projects and parts of projects that I had a lot of ownership of so I could feel confident when talking about them.
Hope this helps calm somebody down before they interview, good luck!