The interview started on a positive note, with the interviewer giving a good introduction about the company and the role. It was positioned as a Staff Engineer role, but the first round focused heavily on niche areas of application architecture and security that were not clearly aligned with my core experience in native Android development.
These topics felt more suited for a specialized application security or platform architect role. My expertise has been around using single FCM accounts and certs, so the questions felt disconnected from my core strengths.
Unfortunately, the questions were not well explained or contextualized, and the flow gave an impression that the goal was more about filtering out than having a technical discussion. While I understand the need to probe depth for a Staff role, the mismatch between the resume and expectations could have been handled better.
Also, some of the Glassdoor reviews seem right. The level of Questions does not match up with the salary range.