The hiring process at Orkes takes an average of 2 days when considering 4 user submitted interviews across all job titles. Candidates applying for Senior Software Engineer had the quickest hiring process (on average 1 day), whereas Technical Recruiter roles had the slowest hiring process (on average 2 days).
I applied through a staffing agency. I interviewed at Orkes
Interview
Lame company, avoid.
Recruiter wouldn't respond after multiple emails giving dates and follow ups. Then claims they were waiting for my dates (which i have provided multiple time already).
Two coding rounds scheduled on different days. They ask to bring your own IDE ready!
But the first one is system design (misleadingly set up as coding by recruiter). There are two medium to large system design questions for an hour interview. It was mentioned at the start the first question should only be 15 minutes.
And the engineer who did that was rude, condensing and somewhat stupid.
I get the communication is part of what they test, but after a certain point it goes both ways. Interviewer would keep changing the requirement to make the answers wrong. A system that handles duplicate business requests later becomes a legacy system where Kafka has to exist but somehow cannot be touched in anyway and so everything i mentioned about producer side prevention using idempotence attribute etc until then is wrong, duh! Now introducing new requirements or changing criteria is usually a normal way for interviewers see trade offs and multiple solutions, but here the interviewer was very clearly only doing it to later say the initial solutions were all wrong and wasn't even what they were asking for. Asks things like "Can JSON really have array attributes?" (it does?! - misleading and confusing) and later says "I was actually just pointing at the syntax on what you wrote down for it, it was missing a closing braces".
Frankly although i had some good pointers i was a bit tired already before the interview and wasn't doing my best too, except it was clear anyway it was me who was dodging the bullet. Interviewer would not offer any time answering any questions about the company or him despite being a start up! Cuts off the call abruptly saying "Ok, I will pass feedback. Good luck to the next round tomorrow", not even a "we are close to the end of time" or anything like that.
Looked at teamblind reviews later and understood what is going on.
I applied online. The process took 1 week. I interviewed at Orkes in Oct 2025
Interview
Recruiter Screen went well. I sent a followup email after our discussion. The next step was meeting with the Hiring Manager. I never heard back and they ghosted me. This represents a lack of professionalism, so they did me a favor.
I applied through a recruiter. I interviewed at Orkes
Interview
I was contacted by an Orkes recruiter for a Product Manager position that was to report directly to the CPO. The process started with an initial HR-style screening, followed by multiple rounds including interviews with the CPO, CTO, CEO, Director of Engineering, a system design exercise with a developer, and other behavioral assessments.
Unfortunately, the overall experience was quite disappointing. The process dragged on for nearly six months, largely due to lack of follow-up and coordination from the recruiting side. I often had to proactively check in or remind the recruiter to keep things moving. At one point, communication stopped altogether, and I only re-engaged with the team after directly reaching out to the CPO via LinkedIn.
Another major concern was the lack of clarity about the role itself. There was no firm job description or defined scope throughout the process. Midway through, I was informed that the compensation would be reduced by about 10–15% because the “scope had changed,” yet no updated responsibilities or documentation were ever provided. This left me questioning whether the company knew what they were actually hiring for.
Culturally, Orkes appears to be very engineering-centric. Most of the leadership and hiring team members seem to approach problems with a software engineer’s mindset, which made it challenging to have nuanced conversations about product strategy, user experience, and cross-functional collaboration.
In the end, I was rejected over a brief call with the recruiter without any specific feedback from the hiring manager or leadership team.
Overall takeaway: Orkes seems to be an early-stage company still figuring out its structure and hiring processes. While the technology and leadership backgrounds are impressive, the disorganization, lack of role clarity, and minimal communication make the interview experience frustrating for candidates, especially for non-engineering roles like Product Management.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Take home test - Improve the Orkes conductor HTTP API by suggesting 3 features reliability, developer velocity, and observability.