Palantir | SDE New Grad | USA | Oct | [Reject after 5th round]

I applied online in September through Palantir's careers page. The application was lengthy and asked many questions, such as "Why Palantir?" and "Why software engineering?" I completed an online assessment on Hackerrank, which consisted of three parts and took approximately 120 minutes. The questions involved building a dependency graph, which I solved using an adjacency list, topological sort, and regular expressions. I finished the assessment within 30 minutes.

After ten days, I received an email to schedule a Karat interview. This was an online platform where they screen candidates before Palantir interviews. The interview lasted for an hour and included a two-minute introduction, fifteen minutes of questions on time and space complexities, and two Leetcode medium graph-based questions.

A week later, a technical recruiter (CTR) contacted me for a phone screening. The call was approximately 45 minutes long and included questions about my background, experience, and why I chose computer science. I was then informed that there would be two additional one-hour interview rounds focusing on learning and decomposition.

I signed an NDA and received emails for rounds four and five after two weeks. I asked the CTR about the interview format, but I did not receive a response.

The decomposition interview was similar to a system design interview. It lasted for an hour and included twenty minutes of background and behavioral questions. I was then presented with a problem statement and asked to provide ideas for a first-cut solution. I was also asked to draw various system design components, choose different options, code APIs, and optimize the API based on data flow.

The learning interview involved learning a new concept and coding. It lasted for an hour and included twenty minutes of background and behavioral questions. I was given five tasks and was able to complete three before the time ran out. The tasks involved designing a custom npm or pip-like concept, exploring interfaces and objects, and implementing the concept using multithreading.

I was expecting a final round with a manager, but the CTR emailed stating that they did not have a position that matched my skillset. I emailed her requesting feedback, but I did not receive a response.

Overall, the interview process was very exhausting and time-consuming. However, Palantir's products are great, and the interview questions and format were well-designed.