Interviewing with Simon Data

Interviewing with Simon? Here’s what to expect. We’re continually improving our process, but this is how things look today.

At Simon Data we fully acknowledge that interviewing for software development jobs is an imperfect science. Whether as the interviewer or the candidate, many factors can contribute to false positives or false negatives. Our interview process is designed not only to find candidates who will thrive at Simon and add to our culture, but also to initiate a healthy long-lasting relationship between the company and what will hopefully be a future employee.

What to expect

Throughout every interaction

• You’ll be interacting with your future peers
• Please ask us questions! We want you to be excited about joining our engineering team.
• Give us feedback! Engineering is our full time job, not interviewing; we’ll make mistakes. Our culture is centered around transparency and feedback, that extends to our interview process.
• Relax! As much as possible, please approach the interviews as a chance to work with a respected peer, not an imposing authority figure.

The phases

• An introductory phone call where we get to know each other
• A series of technical interviews, including with our CTO and co-founder, Matt Walker
• [NYC only] An on-site interview consisting of at least 3 technical interviews by your future peers
• A conversation with our CEO and co-founder, Jason Davis
• A (maximum 3-hour) take home assignment

The technical interviews

As an engineer at Simon you’ll be expected to write a large quantity of code to solve problems. Those problems can vary between straightforward things like using a new API or complex challenges that will involve thinking very deeply about a system, it’s edge cases, and how it will function at scale. In all situations solving the problems will involve diligence, fault tolerance, and creativity.

We have designed the questions in our technical interviews to give candidates a chance to show off how they would excel in some of those situations. We don’t ask “trick” questions where a candidate is expected to figure out the magic way to solve a problem. Primarily the 1 on 1 technical interviews, will test candidates on their ability to algorithmically break a problem down and implement a solution. A candidate’s ability to design a larger system will be more necessary in the take home assignment.

Recommended preparation

• Spend some time getting comfortable with basic algorithms. We emphasize basic here — there is no expectation that you’ll implement orthogonal range search structures.
• Spend some time trying to solve sample programming questions from websites like Project Euler or Katas.
• Brush up on your favorite language. We are more impressed with fluency in a language than ability to use the latest fad.
• Be comfortable starting with and analyzing a naive solution and working forward from there.
• Be comfortable coding in www.collabedit.com or using Google Hangouts to share your screen (preferred)

Not interviewing with Simon?

Check us out at http://www.simondata.com/careers, or drop us a note at jobs@simondata.com — we’d love to chat!