I was initially contacted by a recruiter who I had worked with before for another role with a different company. The interview was a 4 stage process, which consisted of an initial 45 minute phone screen / fit assessment with the Engineering Manager, followed by two 1 hour long interviews assessing my technical ability. Finally, I had to give a 15 minute technical presentation in front of a panel of interviewers. For the first technical assessment, I was instructed by the recruiter to choose from three possible questions/scenarios to discuss with the interview team. I prepared for two of the three options, which was fortunate, because when I got to the interview I didn't get to actually choose. This was a facilitated code review style assessment which was indicative of a real-life task one would do as a staff level engineer, which I appreciated. I would say this interview was both a technical and a behavioral style interview. The second round was a systems focused interview, which was entirely focused on Unix/Linux operating system APIs, shells and process scheduling. This was presumably meant to evaluate my experience and felt more like a rapid-fire quiz that didn't leave much room for discussion, either you got the answer right our wrong. Fortunately I felt I was able to answer most of the questions correctly. The final stage of the interview was a 15 minute presentation I had to give demonstrating a project I was heavily involved in. Scheduling this last round was quite a pain due to mistakes or technical issues with Pantheon's scheduling system. The interview had to be rescheduled and even after rescheduling, apparently some of the participants had issues, which resulted in further delay. I had prepared a bit too much to talk about, and as a result, ended up going over the time limit, but I appreciated that the team was willing to accommodate, especially given after all of the aforementioned scheduling issues. Despite being told by the Engineering Manager that "if you make to this stage, you're likely to get an offer unless you really bomb it", I did not ultimately get the offer. What ensued was about 2 weeks worth of waiting and me periodically checking in to see what the status was. It was evident that they were holding out for a "gold medalist" candidate and considering me as a backup; no hard feelings there as I understand this is part of the business. I did end up moving on at that point to prioritize other interviews. I finally got the expected rejection letter basically saying I was great but suggesting I was not qualified for the role, rather than that they just decided to go with another candidate. I thanked them for their time and asked for feedback (always worth a try), but none was given. Overall, I think this would have been a positive interview experience if it wasn't marred by scheduling snafus and then the subsequent 2 week waiting period. The process seemed to move quickly up until the very end, whereupon it slowed to a crawl. Also, feedback throughout the process would have been appreciated. I was under the impression that everything went well, but there must have been something I could improve upon - unfortunately I am left guessing as to what that might be. This makes me really appreciate all the more the companies that give me verbatim feedback, however critical or brutally honest, from the interview panel.
