TLDR: long process, 8 interviews, friendly people, offer received and rejected, but overall great impression, might apply again in the future.
As other people mentioned, the hiring process was long. But I did not mind...
And due to the Covid, all interviews were online.
First step was an online coding challenge, some algorithm problems to solve a bit of training on any platform should help you prepare for that.
Second step was an interview with a someone from HR. Usual questions: who are you, why zalando, why this position. It was very friendly, almost like a casual conversation.
Third step was an interview with someone from the hiring team. It was not a technical interview per se, but it was about what they were doing, their expectations for the role, and discuss my experience.
Fourth and final step is a whole afternoon with 5 interviews (1 again with HR, 1 with a project manager and 3 technical interviews with different people from different teams).
The inetrviews with HR and project manager were about my previous jobs, and my personality, how I fit in a team, how I am used to work etc.
The 3 technical interviews were about:
- software architecture: on white board exercice to add a service to an existing application (micro-services),
- network and cicd: a list of questions about how a cicd pipeline works, how to diagnostic a network issue
- general computer science: it something between a conversation and an oral exam about computer science that could go in any direction (data structure, algo, rest, etc).
Having those interviews in a row of interviews is definitely not easy but they don't seem to expect you to know everything, it seems it's more to get a good understanding of what you can do.
And every single interviewer was very friendly, I had some laughs and my overall impression was great.
In the end, they though I was not senior enough for this position. But they though I could be a good for another one. So, they I had another interview with another team lead, just casual conversation about the position. Again I had good impression and this time I received concrete offer.
I rejected this offer :(
Yes all that for that... But I received another offer with a substantially higher salary, so it was a tough call but went the other way ;)