I applied online. The process took 6 weeks. I interviewed at SpaceX (Redmond, WA) in Apr 2023
Interview
I interviewed for Starlink SWE New Grad. Tough but really fun and fast-moving process. I had a verbal offer the day after my onsite. The recruiting team was very technically proficient and highly responsive, and I somehow jibed with every engineer I met. Based on the interviews, this is not a company for lightweight engineers looking to coast. I felt inspired by how crazy smart everyone was and started feeling imposter syndrome for first time in my life! Ten rounds described below.
Interview questions [8]
Question 1
*Round 1: Recruiter Call - 30 mins. Surprisingly, the recruiter is very technical, personable, and very aligned with hiring philosophy. Know the company and your resume!
*Round 2: Technical exam - 4 hrs. I was able to finish it in under 2 hrs. Scenario tailored for actual Starlink platform. Have to apply advanced algorithm concepts. No boring LC questions that people memorize or cheat on.
*Round 3: Technical Deep-Dive Interview - 45 mins: hiring manager will ask you to go deep into one thing from your resume, either internship or personal project. But it has to be something you can actually talk about in depth. Few lightning-round questions thrown in toward the middle to make sure you know your CS concepts and also test your conversational pivoting abilities.
*Round 4: Onsite Technical Panel Presentation – 30 mins + 30 mins Q&A: present a detailed technical project that you led or developed to a panel of engineers. Mine had 8 people.
*Rounds 5-8: Onsite 1:1 or 2:1 Interviews with various managers - 45 mins each: whiteboard coding, various problem solving using math, CS, physics principles. Very, very technical.
*Rounds 9-10: “Informal” Interviews with Senior Leadership: behavioral questions that integrated some technical stuff. One senior leader was really interested in one of my current unfinished personal projects and we ended up talking about that the whole time.
Interviewed for Flight Software. After the initial HR round, first round was out of box technical question. Interviewers gave me a chance to ask some questions, then followed up with 3 quicker questions about data structures and networking.
Spoke with recruiter only. I was asked about career goals, a technical achievement that i was proud of, why I want to work for SpaceX. I was told I was to receive an coding assessment but I have not heard back from company
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Tell me about a technical achievement that i was proud of
I applied online. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at SpaceX in Aug 2023
Interview
Found position on LinkedIn and applied through SpaceX's career site.
Phone Screen - basic questions about experience, projects, etc..
Virtual Tech Interview - Interviewer was very nice but the interview question seemed pretty hard. At the time of the interview, I had 275 leetcode solved and 843 submissions, but it felt like I did not study a single day. Included a lot of database-related stuff. Did so badly that the interviewer had to finish the interview early. I feel worthless.