I applied through a recruiter. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Scale (New York, NY) in Apr 2025
Interview
Overall good but demanding process. 7 rounds:
1. Recruiter call
2. Technical call (Object Oriented Programming)
3. Manager Call
4. Last round: Virtual onsite with 4 back-to-back interviews:
a. Technical (OOP)
b. Behavioral
c. Applied ML
d. ML Fundamentals
The interview process is clear and they use ModernLoop to schedule interviews and get ready for them. It is very time-demanding. I did 7+ hours of interviews in total.
The ML Fundamentals is reading a research paper and answering questions. Be sure to please your interviewer and be highly optimistic about LLM research and AI research. I said that ML research was not a fundamental research and I don't think the interviewer liked that.
I got denied for "not performing well" at the ML Fundamentals interview. I am obviously super disappointed after dedicating that much time. I am also reassured to not work with people who cannot accept different opinions and cannot review their own process: Outside the fact that it did not go well with one interviewer if after doing well to all others does not ring like something is weird, it is sad.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
- Card game / Oriented Object Programming
- Simple RAG pipeline coding
- Review a ML research paper and answer questions
- What are my defaults and my qualities? How do they impact my work? What do I do about them? --> Classic behavioral questions
Phone screen coding is 60 mins coding, Texas hold 'em poker game. Design functions to check if the cards at hand are n of a kind, straight flush, straight, flush, etc. What if joker card can be a wildcard how to change the algorithm
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Texas hold 'em poker game. Design functions to check if the cards at hand are n of a kind, straight flush, straight, flush, etc. What if joker card can be a wildcard how to change the algorithm
Candidates applying for Applied AI Engineer roles take an average of 21 days to get hired, when considering 2 user submitted interviews for this role. To compare, the hiring process at Scale overall takes an average of 23 days.
Common stages of the interview process at Scale as a Applied AI Engineer according to 2 Glassdoor interviews include:
Phone interview: 40%
Personality test: 20%
One on one interview: 20%
Skills test: 20%
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