I applied through an employee referral. I interviewed at Cruise
Interview
I have tried to apply online and as a result talked with two different recruiters. Both of them concluded that my experience was not a good fit for what they were looking for despite my experience with control engineering, sensor fusion, motion planning and prediction, embedded development and exposure to real-world electromechanical systems. Well, whatever :)
I have decided to try once more via referral and it was so much better this time. The whole interviewing felt a bit stochastic. I believe it is most likely due to the rapid company growth and HR department being a bit understaffed. I had two phone screenings, on-site and several calls with hiring managers. In the end they were ready to talk about the offer, but I had already accepted another one. Overall, I liked the company, but I also have a feeling that they struggle from the rapid growth and the career trajectory for new hires is not very clear.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
LRU Cache, word search in a grid, go over a high-level system diagram and talk about how to verify and test the system, design a queue etc.
I applied through an employee referral. I interviewed at Cruise (San Francisco, CA)
Interview
The interview process consisted of an initial recruiter screen followed by a technical phone interview focused on data structures and problem-solving in Python. The onsite loop included 4 rounds: one coding round (medium LeetCode-style problem), one system design round focused on building a scalable ML data processing pipeline, one backend/API design round, and one behavioral round. Interviewers emphasized real-world problem solving, tradeoffs, and communication. Overall, the process was structured and aligned with large-scale distributed systems and ML infrastructure.
Online submission. Then contacted by recruiter. The phone screening, and then onsite, which lasted an entire day in San Francisco office. Sat in a room while interviewers came and left.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
generic questions, nothing to really test what I knew. The interviewers seemed to not know how to interview a candidate and what to look for. I didn't want to work there after what i saw.
I applied online. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Cruise in Nov 2024
Interview
The interview process consisted of a one-hour coding challenge followed by a one-hour deep dive with the hiring manager.
The coding challenge involved solving a LeetCode hard-level problem,
The discussion with the hiring manager focused on previous experience. Mismatch in chemistry. Rejected.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
coding round: lc high frequency hard
HM round: project deep dive
Senior Software Engineer applicants have rated the interview process at Cruise with 3.1 out of 5 (where 5 is the highest level of difficulty) and assessed their interview experience as 45% positive. To compare, the company-average is 40.1% positive. This is according to Glassdoor user ratings.
Candidates applying for Senior Software Engineer roles take an average of 27 days to get hired, when considering 53 user submitted interviews for this role. To compare, the hiring process at Cruise overall takes an average of 26 days.
Common stages of the interview process at Cruise as a Senior Software Engineer according to 53 Glassdoor interviews include:
Phone interview: 35%
Presentation: 20%
One on one interview: 19%
Group panel interview: 7%
Skills test: 7%
IQ intelligence test: 5%
Drug test: 4%
Personality test: 2%
Background check: 1%
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