Interview process
The process was quick and well organized. A recruiter reached out, we had a 30-minute intro call, and within a day I was invited to a 45-minute technical Zoom with a backend engineer. I heard back with a decision a few days later, so the whole thing took under two weeks. The technical round had three parts: about 20 minutes of system design (“what happens when you click Like on Spotify,” followed by a data-modeling question on users, songs and their relationship), a short live-coding problem (find the first duplicate in an array), and a few behavioral questions (a time you received feedback, and the challenges of moving from a large company to a startup). What went well: Scheduling and communication were smooth, and the recruiter answered my question about the interview format right away. The interviewer was friendly and collaborative. The design discussion was a real conversation rather than a quiz; I clarified the use cases first, walked through an event-driven design with Kafka fan-out, and talked through storage trade-offs. I solved the coding problem with an optimal O(n) approach after confirming my plan with the interviewer. What didn’t go well: The recruiter said the coding portion would be practical rather than LeetCode-style, but the problem was a classic algorithm question, so the prep guidance didn’t match the actual round. With design, coding and behavioral all packed into 45 minutes, each section felt rushed, and there wasn’t much time to go deep on any of them. On my side, my behavioral answer about feedback came out less structured than I wanted. The rejection was a templated email citing a “different technical profile,” with no specific feedback, so it was hard to know what to improve.
- Phone interview
Interview rounds
2 questions across 1 roundPhone interview
2 questionsSpecific questions asked
Given an array of integers, find the first duplicate.
Interview tips
Prepare for all three areas, because the technical round covers system design, coding and behavioral in just 45 minutes. For system design, practice explaining what happens behind a common user action, end to end, in about 15 to 20 minutes. Start by clarifying the use cases, then cover the API, the event flow (queues or streams like Kafka for fan-out), and storage choices. Be ready for a follow-up on the data model, especially how to handle a many-to-many relationship at large scale. For coding, don’t count on it being purely “practical” even if you’re told so. Brush up on core data structures like hash sets, maps and arrays, and practice easy-to-medium algorithm problems. Talk through your approach first, confirm it with the interviewer, then write clean code and mention any space or time trade-offs. For behavioral, have a few short, structured stories ready, especially one about receiving feedback and one about moving fast or owning something end to end. Their values emphasize speed, urgency and accountability, so frame your stories around those. Be ready to explain why you want to move to a fast-growing startup. Finally, read up on the product. They build AI agents for security operations, so having a basic idea of how agentic systems and security alert pipelines work will help you ask good questions.
Company culture
The company clearly moves fast. Every step of the process happened quickly, from the first recruiter message to the final decision, which matches their focus on speed and urgency. The recruiter was responsive and straightforward, and the interviewer was friendly and easy to talk to, which made the technical round feel more like a conversation than a test. It also felt like a startup still in its early building phase. They’re growing quickly and are led by experienced repeat founders, so the bar seems to be people who can own things end to end and ship without much structure. Even the rejection note was warm and mentioned staying in touch as their needs change, which left a good impression. Since I only had two short conversations, I didn’t get a deep look at the day-to-day team culture, but what I saw was energetic, focused and respectful of candidates’ time.
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