I applied through a recruiter. I interviewed at RBC (Toronto, ON) in May 2017
Interview
Applied for a Machine Learning Engineer position at RBC Research. Hiring process took two steps, one phone call with HR, one home assignment. HR phone call was easy, pretty basics HR questions. Second is home assignment (detail below). Not too complicated if you know the basics in computer science.
The catch: they will NOT hiring any one on a full-time permanent position out right. They will ask you to start on a 4 month contractor position after which they can terminate your contract without notice/reason or further compensation. I did not pursue any further when they told me that.
My opinion: they might do interesting work, but job looks more focused on the software engineering side, as oppose to the ML side. Salary compensation is below industry standard.
May be a good position if you have less than 2 years of experience in software engineering and want to do ML. Not so good if you have 5-6 years of experience in Data Science and already have a FT position somewhere else.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Random Walk Distances On Graphs
Given a graph and any pair of vertices i and j, it is possible to take a random walk starting from i and eventually arrive at j, if i is connected to j. Specifically, starting at i, each time we choose an edge to traverse randomly according to some probability distribution P, and repeat until we arrive at j for the first time. The number of edges traversed is a random variable with some expected value, which is the expected random walk distance from i to j. By this definition, the expected random walk distance from a vertex to itself is always 0. Furthermore, multiple traversals of an edge are also counted in the random walk distance. Your task is to write a program to estimate the expected random walk distance between all pairs of vertices in a given graph.
Asked technical question related to machine learning, system design, python programming and OS. No Behavioral Questions asked. In person interview with hiring manager and a team member. Questions are not very hard but with a broad range.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
My machine learning projects that I most proud of.
It was fairly easy and also smooth but the technical part was a little difficult. Majority of the questions were based on your past projects and some of the questions were about machine learning
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
What was your hardest project decision you had to take in order to complete it
I applied through a recruiter. The process took 2 months. I interviewed at RBC (Toronto, ON) in Dec 2022
Interview
The interview process was great and covered many points. It started with me being asked a few questions about my Resume. I then solved a coding question in front of them. My Java, HTML/CSS knowledge was then tested by being asked several program-specific questions. Finally, I was told to tell the Interviewers what I know about Machine Learning, and then the interview was rounded off with me speaking to fellow interns in my current position.