I applied online. The process took 6 months. I interviewed at Cruise (San Francisco, CA)
Interview
An initial phone screen with a recruiter comes first which is fairly relaxed. Mostly this is about gauging your interest for the position and letting you know what the interview process is like. The recruiter will then schedule a one-on-one technical interview with another engineer. This is a screening process meant to stop any subpar applicants from reaching the next stage. The technical question is not all that difficult - a simple algorithms question. Following this, the recruiter will schedule 4 interviews in series. Each interview is an hour long. In my case, 3 of the 4 interviewers were members of the team I would join. These are all technical interviews but the first third is usually a “get to know you” session where the interviewer is gaining information on whether you’ll be a fit for the team.
Following the last round of interviews, I had to wait a good month before I finally got an offer which is unusually long. I got a verbal offer at this point and was told the real offer would come the following week. Three months passed following this verbal offer with the recruiter continually pushing back the date of the real offer until I was eventually ghosted.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Tell me about a time your solution to a problem ultimately failed and how you addressed this failure.
I applied through an employee referral. I interviewed at Cruise (San Francisco, CA)
Interview
The interview process consisted of an initial recruiter screen followed by a technical phone interview focused on data structures and problem-solving in Python. The onsite loop included 4 rounds: one coding round (medium LeetCode-style problem), one system design round focused on building a scalable ML data processing pipeline, one backend/API design round, and one behavioral round. Interviewers emphasized real-world problem solving, tradeoffs, and communication. Overall, the process was structured and aligned with large-scale distributed systems and ML infrastructure.
Online submission. Then contacted by recruiter. The phone screening, and then onsite, which lasted an entire day in San Francisco office. Sat in a room while interviewers came and left.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
generic questions, nothing to really test what I knew. The interviewers seemed to not know how to interview a candidate and what to look for. I didn't want to work there after what i saw.
I applied online. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Cruise in Nov 2024
Interview
The interview process consisted of a one-hour coding challenge followed by a one-hour deep dive with the hiring manager.
The coding challenge involved solving a LeetCode hard-level problem,
The discussion with the hiring manager focused on previous experience. Mismatch in chemistry. Rejected.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
coding round: lc high frequency hard
HM round: project deep dive