There were three tech coding tests. A 20 minute sql test by a data engineer, a 45 min python test from a different engineer, and a whiteboarding of ETL design by a data scientist. At the end of it they came in saying "yay, you actually passed all three of our tests, we'd like to move forward " and when I left I was under the impression they were going to move quickly. The next and final round was scheduled for a week later, but they canceled the previous afternoon saying there were some scheduling changes.
The rescheduled interview was for ten days later, and they canceled the afternoon of the day before saying "we're making some changes to how we build our team" and we might have something again and we'd love to reach out.
I pulled out of consideration telling them that cancelling twice on the previous afternoon was just too flaky for me. I liked the data engineer who interviewed me but I found their switching form "oh we really want you!" switching to "we have to cancel at the last minute" twice, just way too schizo for me.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
convert a json file to a csv and subset it and download images from a url
I applied through a recruiter. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Skillz (Austin, TX) in Nov 2021
Interview
Recruiter reached out on LinkedIn (Nov 2021) and described the company, team and role in detail. Also, mentioned an attractive compensation package to get me interested.
The next round was a take-home assessment. If you've worked on Python/SQL for a few years it'll be a breeze. 1 hour 15 mins total. 2 SQL & 1 Python: I completed the SQL within 10 mins but the Python question took the rest of time as you had to handle several edge cases.
Proceeded to the next round with the Hiring Manager. Discussed previous experience and the tech stacks they used. He was impressed and I moved on to the final virtual onsite round.
This is where things got extremely weird. The recruiting coordinator nudged me to download the app (keep in mind there's no Skillz app but some other apk) and asked me to play games. I read in the other reviews that they make candidates signup and play to boost their DAU/MAU but I'm not certain.
Virtual onsite was 4 rounds and was split into 2 days.
Day1:The first round was supposedly an extension of the Python challenge but it was mainly focused on whether you can pull data from an API (Extract), perform basic Transformation and upsert into a DB (Load). Halfway through it stopped being a coding round and more of a technical Q&A round which was mildly irritating. The 2nd round that day got pushed by 2 days due to interviewer's unavailability.
Day2: This was a system design round where you whiteboard a recent project. It was conducted by 2 interviewers one on the Frontend team and didn't really understand most of the details. Why be a part of a technical DE interview when you work on a completely different part of the application? As a result, I had to repeat everything twice. The other person was a DE but joined late and just asked high-level questions: clearly not interested in the process.
The 2nd round was with a Data Eng Manager and this was the only most pleasant experience - general behavioral questions.
Even before attending the final round (which was postponed by them), received a reject. This was in a way relieving since there were a lot more interviews in my pipeline. Overall did not enjoy the process at all.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
SQL - Aggregates and Joins. Python - JSON parsing/ ETL.
I applied online. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Skillz (Vancouver, BC) in Sep 2020
Interview
Phone interview
Online Assessment
Day 1: 4 Interview (technical)
Day 2: 3 Interview (Cultural Fit)
Day 3: CTO + Data Manager + Executive
CTO Interview changed my life! Loved her attitude and her thoughtful questions.
I applied online. The process took 5 weeks. I interviewed at Skillz (San Francisco, CA) in Aug 2019
Interview
Phone screen followed by a 4 hour coding assessment through hackerrank. It was a single data engineering problem (an html dataset which required parsing and sorting) to solve using python. It took me almost around that time to solve the problem. After that, I was called for an onsite interview. It consisted of a technical round, white-boarding round on streaming data infrastructure and a peer interview on one of my past projects. After that onsite, they let me know they were looking for someone senior but then called me back a month later for another onsite. This time, I met the CTO, CEO and had a culture fit interview. Overall, had a good experience.