Palantir Forward Deployed Engineer Interview Experience
Palantir · Mid level
Interview process
Technical interview was enjoyable since it was less so rigorous LeetCode-style problems, and more practical coding to implement particular features. Prioritize a working solution over an unfinished, optimized code.
Interview rounds · 4
- 1
Recruiter screen
BehavioralQ1. Background questions (your past experiences, projects, etc)
Follow-up questions- This is done by the 3rd party headhunter that eventually referred me to a Palantir recruiter.
- 2
Technical round
CodingDecomposition- Q1. Design a system to help internal company teams arrange events/meetups for hobbies and interests.
- Q2. Write the code to implement one of the core features that you have specified in the design
- 3
Phone screen
Behavioral- Q1. Background questions (your past experiences, projects, etc.)
- 4
Final / onsite round
CodingDecompositionQ1. Learning round: given a documentation of an obscure coding language, solve problems.
How they answeredYou can't really prepare much for this one. Show up with the right attitude, and ask the right questions. Be careful on asking questions that can make you seem like you need a lot of handholding / guidance to solve the problem -- that caused me to fail this round.
Q2. Design Yelp.
How they answeredThis was a decomposition question. I went back and forth with the interviewer and created a basic system design to implement Yelp. We discussed technical considerations, and add more layers of complexities as we progress. Be opinionated and be ready to support your design choices.
Palantir values opinionated people.
Tips from the candidate
Be careful with the questions you ask during the learning round. High-level, clarifying questions are okay. But make sure your questions dont make you come across like you need too much handholding.
Company culture
I applied for FDSE - Commercial path, and was connected to a team working with the LA power utility company at that time. They were developing a system to detect peak hours for the electric grid so they can adjust the power delivery to minimize the risk of forest fire when the grids are overloaded during a dry season.
The mission felt impactful and beneficial to the community surrounding it.
The downside is that there are other parts of the company that deals with more government / defense work, that is more on the controversial side.