SpaceX interview questions

Step 1: Initial contact via LinkedIn. Step 2: First-pass phone interview to determine general candidacy and cultural fit. Step 3: Technical phone interview. Step 4: Technical on-site interview which consisted of a technical presentation, a written test and eight 1-on-1 interviews. Step 5: Behavioral phone interview (normally part of the on-site but they ran out of time).

I applied online and was invited for a phone interview a few weeks later. The phone interview was standard and was conducted by a software engineer and an executive. The interview was pretty thorough but quite fair. You need to know your stuff though. A few weeks after the phone interview I was invited to do a 6 hour coding test. The coding test does require some preparation - it's a fair test, but if you get stuck on anything you'll run out of time very very quickly. The deliverables are not just the source code, but a fully working system so you need to know a bit more than just writing code - they'll send you more info a few days before the test so be prepared to use the time before the test to practice and read all the info carefully. I was able to get to all the required parts but ran out of time for some of the extra credit stuff. A little over a week after the coding test, I was invited for a day of on-site interviews. The day started with a tour of the facility, which is absolutely amazing. Just that was already worth all the time I had put into until then. After the tour, I had to give a 30 min presentation to the entire panel. The rest of the day was filled with quite a few one-on-one and two-on-one interviews. Everybody was very pleasant and cordial but the questions weren't easy so you definitely need to prepare thoroughly. Questions ranged from pure technical programming, system design to more general engineering and management questions. No games or brain teasers which I really appreciated. Be aware that even though you passed a coding test, you'll still get technical questions during the on-site. It's a long day but it also was quite fun. About two and a half weeks after that I received a pretty sweet job offer :-). Overall the experience was great. It's a though interview so you do really need to be ready for that and be prepared to put in the time - it's not a quick process. The only thing I had to do was prompt the recruiting folks every once in a while - they seemed to be very busy so you do need to take the initiative from time to time to keep the ball rolling. There's an old book called Sweaty Palms that really did give me good insights (and your palms _will_ be sweaty!) as well as a few books about coding and software manager interviews that were very helpful. Read them! Highly recommended.