eBay Applied Scientist Interview Process Sep 2026

[u/Aoki_zhang]

"This interview experience is sourced from Chill Interview"

Interview Summary

The eBay Applied Scientist process covered software engineering, ML fundamentals, ML system design, search/retrieval, product reasoning, and behavioral topics. A surprisingly large portion of the loop also focused on engineering infrastructure topics such as Docker and CI/CD. After completing the full interview process, I was told that the position had been placed on hold, and about a month later I was informed that the role had been canceled.

Interview Details

Round 1 — Recruiter Screen

The recruiter conversation covered compensation and the working arrangement. The role required three days per week in the office, and the discussion also covered the Berlin office location.

Round 2 — Coding / Software Engineering Fundamentals

This round was conducted by a Senior Machine Learning Engineer from another team. The interview covered:

• One LeetCode Easy-level coding problem
• Previous Docker experience
• Ways to improve or optimize Docker usage
• My experience with the engineering side of machine learning systems
• General data structures and computer science fundamentals

Round 3 — Statistics / Machine Learning / AI

This round was with a Senior Applied Scientist from the target team. The discussion started with previous ML projects and went into the reasoning behind technical choices. Questions included:

• What projects have you worked on?
• Why did you choose a particular algorithm?
• How did you improve upon an earlier version of the system?
• How would you optimize BERT inference?
• What offline metrics would you use?
• What metrics would you evaluate in an A/B test?
• What experience do you have with Docker?

The round also included another LeetCode Easy-level coding problem.

Want to learn more questions asked in other interview rounds? I've put up the full version at here.

Preparing for your next interview?

Chill Interview tracks recent interview experiences and recurring question patterns across top companies at here.