Applied via a reference. Had a phone screen followed by onsite. 5 interviews back to back. Interviewers are not from the hardcore ML crowd and are mostly from low/mid ranked schools.
Ability to think with mathematical rigor was clearly absent. One Data Scientist had little clue as to what Markov Random Fields were. The lab members themselves neither publish in top tier ML/Data conferences nor exuded strong engineering nous.
The upper floor of the office represented a sad state of affairs. Very Bazaar like. The lab itself looks every bit like one of those body-shopping Indian companies based in NJ. The atmosphere was anti-intellectual and very un-silicon valley-like.
They did not even offer a damn fruit during the process that began at 9 AM and lasted till 1:30 PM. All in all, one of the most uninspiring interviewing experiences of my career.