Real Interview Experiences
Learn what to expect directly from candidates and interviewers who've been through it.
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“Rigorous process, DSA questions for data engineering team. Cloud native questions and behavious. Team meeting, and vibe coding. ”
“The Overall Interview ProcessStep 1: Online Assessment (OA): A 60-90 minute screening on platforms like Codility or HackerRank, often featuring 2 LeetCode Medium coding questions and sometimes logic or SQL-based multiple-choice questions.Step 2: Technical Screening (often via Karat): A live technical interview with a third-party partner like Karat. This focuses on core Data Structures and Algorithms (DSA) and fundamental software engineering principles.Step 3: Technical Deep-Dive / Team Panel: A more thorough session with Citi engineers focusing on System Design, Java/Python specifics (like multithreading or database ACID properties), and a deep-dive into your past project architecture.Step 4: Hiring Manager / Behavioral Round: A "culture fit" discussion using the STAR method to evaluate your teamwork and communication, often ending with HR discussions on salary and policy”
“I completed four interview rounds, from the initial recruiter screen to the final System Design round. HR was very supportive throughout the process. The coding rounds consisted of one Medium LeetCode session and one scenario-based OOP coding session. I didn't pass the final System Design stage; feedback indicated they value design skills more than coding speed or syntax, noting that AI tools have made the implementation side of engineering much easier.”
“Hiring managers asked a lot of questions about Java internals, Java build system internals (Maven vs Gradle behaviors), networking internals (HTTP vs HTTP2)”
“The interview process was very thorough, interviewer wanted to understand the depth of understanding I had for every data structure that we had used. The difficulty of the solution itself wasn't significant, the interviewer I had kept prodding and peeling back layers”
“The interview was very quick. The system design is tricky but if you break down the problem into smaller parts it become feasible. The second technical conversation requires speaking out your thought process and reacting to the interviewer suggestions / conversation.”
“Smooth process, time taken after technical is very long wait. Talking through code went well, communication is important.”
“The screening process was pretty straightforward. It started with a few basic questions about my prior experience, relevant background, and the technical projects I had worked on. From there, the conversation focused on the projects I had mentioned, with questions about my specific contributions, the technologies I used, the challenges I encountered, and how I approached solving technical problems. Overall, the screening was fairly conversational and served mainly to assess my technical foundation, hands-on experience, and ability to clearly explain the work I had done.”
“MY DSA was top notch so no issues there, leadership principle questions are predictable so I answered thoroughly.”
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“The weirdest Anthropic round was the company values interview. It was almost like a therapy session, and honestly if you went to a therapist at some point, you will pass that round much more easily.”
“What was very unusual is they didn’t give me any tooling to draw the system design, so I just sketched it on a piece of paper and talked them through it, then we got into this oddly deep debate about whether hover-over history should count as a recommendation signal.”
