I applied through a recruiter. I interviewed at Palantir Technologies (New York, NY)
Interview
Invited in for "expedited" onsite in New York City without a phone screen because of my strong background. Was given a PowerPoint presentation about their products. Then I had two 45 minute technical interviews. The first question I solved in O(nlogn) time, but my interviewer was not satisfied and told me to keep trying. Eventually he showed me his approach which was still O(nlogn). I tried to explain this to the interviewer, but he admitted that he did not fully comprehend my code because he was unfamiliar C++ and was not "a fan of object oriented programming". I found that strange. Especially since I specifically asked if I should use C++ and he said yes. Could have easily done the exact same solution in Java, Python, or Javascript. He told me he was a physics major with no computer science background; I was a computer science major at a top school. Found it odd to say the least, but gave me a good idea of the caliber of talent the company had to offer. The next interview got even more bizarre. It was essentially a design question about making an mobile app full stack to perform a main feature and the interviewer came off disinterested, cranky, and outright rude. Very unprofessional. Possibly a poorly executed stress test to see how one might handle clients. I felt that I aced both interviews. Therefore when they ended my day after just two interviews I was quite surprised and at that point it was clear I was not going to receive an offer.
I applied through a recruiter. I interviewed at Palantir Technologies
Interview
The interview process consisted of an initial recruiter screening followed by a technical interview with an engineer. The technical round focused primarily on LeetCode-style coding questions and problem-solving. The recruiter was responsive and the interview process was straightforward.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
What is a technical project I have worked on recently.
A recruiter reached out to me and has the initial screening. Then the recruiter reached back to me after 3 weeks. You just have to wait for the recuriter to reach out to you. It could take some time.
I applied through an employee referral. I interviewed at Palantir Technologies (New York, NY)
Interview
The process was straightforward and focused on both engineering fundamentals and communication in an ambiguous, customer-facing forward-deployed role. It included an initial screen, technical/coding-style evaluation, and behavioral discussions around ownership, problem solving, and working directly with users or clients.