4 Stages - COLOSSAL WASTE OF TIME
1st - 1 Hour - General discussion about role, and some general questions about your background.
2nd - 1 Hour - More technical discussion about SOC
3rd - 1 Hour - "Pair" Programming task
4th - 3 Hours - On Site 3 stage interview, 1st with 2 members of Security team, 2nd with CISO, and 3rd exit interview with Hiring/HR.
Process took ~1 month.
IMPORTANT TO NOTE: I was informed I was the first person to go through the entire interview process and that they were hiring 2 people for this position.
Received good feedback from every interview and still rejected, with the following feedback:
"Struggled with "Pair programming task" and was underwhelming in CompSci fundamentals."
Keep in mind, the 3rd stage was the task I struggled with according to them and they invited me for 4th one.
The task they said I struggled with (from 3rd Stage) required you to share you full screen to ensure no cheating, and they ask you to not use LLMs (even though they do it ofter as part of their job, self-admitted), but you are allowed to Google things, and read docs etc.
It consisted of connecting to a VMWare session with mismanaged access controls, where I had to wait for them to troubleshoot it for 10 minutes, including not only me being given access to the VM, but also them having to manually tinker around with the File System to place the task in a folder I could actually use.
Furthermore, their VM meant that you cannot use shortcuts like "F2" for global renaming for variables or functions, so you have to manually do this. This is a result of the VM being through a browser and the browser window getting focused when you use the F-keys.
Another problem was that the cursor was black in the IDE (VSCode) which made it incredibly difficult to see so you either have to waste time changin to Light Mode or waste time navigating environment.
The tasks were written badly, included formatting mistakes in the MD file which resulted in me asking questions about the task for clarity.
You cannot copy and paste between the VM environment and your own machine, making regex validation slower. Doing this through their VM was incredibly slow as the VM browser took ages to load.
As a result, the time allotted was diminished due to these oversights. I was (on the same day) invited for a 4th stage interview in 3 days time, in person, requiring me - on short notice - to travel to London and meet them on site for 3 hours.
During the 4th Stage interview, the CISO was giving me incredibly positive feedback such as "You've done brilliantly in the interview process, I am incredibly impressed. The questions you've asked have been amazing. I liked this answer so much because you mentioned..." and so on. After this she explained how she felt really lucky in her career and how I should add her on LinkedIn because she wanted to help out, no matter the result of the interview (red flag). I did add her, only for her to ignore my request.
I did my final interview on a Friday and was told to expect a result by the end of the day if lucky, but most likely on the following Monday, and if not then, then definitely by the end of the next week.
Monday rolled around and no response.
I received the rejection on Tuesday. Not only was this rejection delayed, they didn't even have the courtesy to do it directly and email me, opting to go through my recruiter (which is honestly incredibly unprofessional).
Their reasons for rejecting me were primarily around my performance in the 3rd stage interview, which prompted me to question why they didn't reject me after it, and invited me to a 4th stage. Then they took their time "considering" me instead of rejecting me sooner due to the feedback given. Why would they need 3 working days to reject me when they had already made up their mind? I had to explicitly request my feedback in writing from my recruiter, and even then it was vague and not specific.
They're either looking for a unicorn, or someone's family/friend has applied for the position. Don't waste your time.