I applied online. I interviewed at Toptal (San Francisco, CA)
Interview
1. Initial screening for red flags (video chat)
2. Codility excercises, which are timed math-y questions (not representative of engineering work)
3. More mathy questions over a video chat, but timed at 15 minutes
It's bizarre to me that their interview does not screen for engineering skills. After the codility interview I thought "okay, maybe they want to ensure basic programming skills". But it doesn't make sense to continue to screen for rushed math programming. Having designed and iterated on engineering interview processes, the toptal interview process is lazy at best.
They offered to let me try again but I already have offers to do remote contracting work for other folks so I won't be back.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Count the number of carry operations given two numbers to sum.
United States Coast Guard - Air Station Sacramento
No offer
Positive experience
Difficult interview
Application
I applied online. I interviewed at Toptal (United States Coast Guard - Air Station Sacramento) in May 2026
Interview
First you apply. you will get a link for a screening interview. (you can edit your interview if the time is not suitable for you.
One screen video call 15min. they arrange the technical interview (you have 48h deadline to start it)
One DSA assesment 1h (3 exercises)
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
the easy was the count words in the biggest string
1 HR, 2 leet code, 1 project, 1 project defence
If you fail one of the leet codes you have a chance to re-apply again after a year. It wasn't bad, but its going downhill now. 2022 there weare about 300+ job offerings for my role, now less than 60
After two technical rounds that went over 1.5 hours, in which I was told I was going to move forward I got an email saying that they found someone else.
