Machine Learning Engineer · Onsite · Coding

Anthropic — Machine Learning Engineer ✅ Passed

Level: Unknown Level

Round: Onsite · Type: Coding · Difficulty: 3/10 · Duration: 60 min · Interviewer: Unfriendly

Topics: Breadth-First Search, Multithreading

Location: San Francisco, CA

Interview date: 2026-01-22

Summary

I was asked to implement a web crawler using a given API. I used BFS to solve the initial problem and addressed two simple constraints with a few lines of code. The follow-up question involved multithreading and the differences between multithreading and multiple processors.

Details

The coding question I got was:

Implement a web crawler using the given API. Use Breadth-First Search (BFS) for the initial implementation.

Constraints:

1. Constraint 1
2. Constraint 2

Follow-up question: Explain the differences between multithreading and multiple processors.

My approach:

1. I implemented a basic web crawler using BFS.
2. I added the two constraints using a couple of lines of code.
3. I explained the concept of multithreading and the differences between multithreading and multiple processors.

Key insights:

• Understanding of BFS is crucial for basic web crawler implementation.
• Knowledge of multithreading and multiprocessing is important for optimization.