It happens to be in a group of people, all recently laid off from a sought after company and most of us applied to DuckDuckGo for backend, front-end and data science roles. DDG did not hire any of us. Some of us were experts in the fields that their assignments were examining and delivered work of excellent quality, as we have done so hundreds of times before with design and RFC documents. What exactly they are looking for is a mystery but I am confident that it's not technical excellence and is probably some obscure internal magic word or soft skill that they really want to see. All in all, I don't think they are really hiring but if they do I am really curious to see who they are going to hire next. While the assignment is paid, overall is a waste of time and it will consume you as their decision does not make any sense and you won't be given any feedback.

Initial step is to write about a challenging technical project that you worked on in the recent past. About 3 pages worth. They focussed on "Desired outcomes" and whether they were met.