BenevolentAI Data Scientist Interview Questions
& Process

First, a chat with the Recruiter to get acquainted. They were very nice. Then, a call with the Team Lead to discuss my experience and technical skills, giving me a chance to highlight my past work. Finally, the main interview round, which included four parts: A. I presented my prior research to the whole team. Preparing the presentation took time, but the team was engaged and interested. B. A conversation with members from the drug discovery/product side about BenevolentAI's objectives. It was a good opportunity to learn more about the company. C. An interview focused on bioinformatics, covering topics like ontologies, databases, and biomedical data types. D. A coding interview.

So first up was this 20-30 min chat online with a recruiter, pretty chill, talking about the job, perks, my background, and why I was into it. That same day, they set up a 45 min interview with the Head of the Group and the Lead Cheminformatics Data Scientist I'd be working with. That second chat happened online about a week later. We went over my experience and skills again, and they gave me more deets on what this specific role needs. It was super friendly, we even went over by 15 min! Then, same day, the recruiter hit me up, wanting to move to the next stage: a big 3 hour online session with a bunch of teams and collaborators. This was like 10 weeks later, still online coz of Covid. It had a few bits: I had to give a 30 min presentation, then met with different teams in smaller groups for mini tech interviews on stuff like cheminformatics, medicinal chemistry, and drug design. Honestly, meeting so many people back-to-back and answering questions was a bit much, but everyone was nice, so it was way better than I expected. The third interview was in the morning, and that afternoon, the recruiter called to set up a fourth online meeting for the next day, just 20 min, to give me feedback. And surprise, that's when I got the offer! Overall, super fast, efficient, professional, and respectful.

First, there was a phone call with HR. Then, a technical coding interview happened. After that, an "on-site" followed, which was actually multiple interviews back to back, all done remotely. The whole thing was super efficient and they let me know about the next steps quickly after each stage.