I applied through an employee referral. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Zscaler (San Jose, CA) in Jun 2021
Interview
3 rounds of technical + hiring manager. Tailored to the level - not just algorithmic problems. Non-programatic problems come from the real job challenges which makes them interesting and relevant. Interviewers are respectful, punctual and engaged.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
What is HTTP pipelining and what problems it solves.
I applied in-person. The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Zscaler (Bengaluru) in Aug 2024
Interview
HR kept rescheduling the interview for 2 weeks. The interviewer was a director of engineering and was very professional and patiently answered my questions as well. Got rejected before technical round though.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
General leadership related questions you've heard before already.
I applied online. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Zscaler in Jun 2024
Interview
1. Call with the recruiter --> just data gathering
2. Call with hiring manager --> Conversation about my experience, current projects, etc. He was a zscaler veteran, but was very understanding and eager to listen to my projects and explain their product and its future.
3. Then came the panel interview on 3 different days. The interview panel was a group of people with 10+ years experience in zscaler. I have given interviews in similar places, but here I felt an arrogant tone and entitlement
Interview questions [3]
Question 1
Questions about a recent big project, some sample Java coding, very superficial.
Again some more details about projects, more of a deep dive into projects. The interviewer was from India, so I had to schedule a late-night interview. The interviewer was with the company for about 12 years, so he was showing some attitude initially, once I explained about the complexity of my projects and showcased my level of understanding about the problems I was working with, he was eased a bit and talked to me nice. The interviewer also asked me to code in Java just to understand my level of comfort in Java,
The question was to write a decision-maker routine that would determine if the service has to route the request to cache or to the db.
The 3rd-panel interview was the worst. The interviewer was with zscaler for 15 years. He was traveling to India, so I had to schedule an early morning interview. His attitude was worse. HE was talking to me like, everything I wrote in my resume was fake. The conversation did not begin with a tone where he genuinely wanted to know what I know, instead he was trying to have his gotcha moment! Grow up ppl.
A deep dive into projects again and a java question.
Get top N transactions of a particular type. Write methods to ingest transactions and get transactions. The returned transaction would have details if the txn is elible for rewards. good question,
Principal Software Engineer applicants have rated the interview process at Zscaler with 2.5 out of 5 (where 5 is the highest level of difficulty) and assessed their interview experience as 50% positive. To compare, the company-average is 53.4% positive. This is according to Glassdoor user ratings.
Candidates applying for Principal Software Engineer roles take an average of 14 days to get hired, when considering 2 user submitted interviews for this role. To compare, the hiring process at Zscaler overall takes an average of 32 days.
Common stages of the interview process at Zscaler as a Principal Software Engineer according to 2 Glassdoor interviews include:
Phone interview: 33%
One on one interview: 33%
Presentation: 17%
Group panel interview: 17%
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