Censys Software Engineer Interview Questions
& Process

HR reached out to me and set up a brief call to talk about what I'm looking for, what skills I have, and when I'm free. The HR person was really nice and knew their stuff. The interview was set for two days later with the hiring manager. It was a pretty relaxed process. The hiring manager told me about their products and asked me about my past experience and a project I'm most proud of. At the end, the manager mentioned they were interviewing a lot of candidates and would let me know about a final round with some engineers if I seemed like a good fit.

So, I had this really rough experience with Censys, it was the worst. Started with a rejection email, then a surprise interview request, which was odd but I went ahead. The whole thing took over a month. I ended up having 5 interviews with 6 people total, not what the recruiter said. There was a 4-hour coding test in the middle. In the end, they rejected me without any explanation. I asked the recruiter for some insight, but they said it's company policy to not give feedback. Honestly, it felt like a waste of time for everyone involved, and I was pretty annoyed to get no feedback after putting in over a month of effort.

The interview process was supposed to have 5 rounds, but I only spoke with the recruiter and the hiring manager. The recruiter was great, super open and honest, and gave me a clear idea of the job and what they were looking for. The hiring manager, though, seemed a bit lost about the role they were hiring for. They didn't really ask me about my background, but instead spent time picking apart my resume, which was weird since I already passed the recruiter screen. They also seemed more focused on hiring for a Senior role, going into detail about that instead of the junior position. Honestly, I was disappointed with how unprofessional the hiring manager was and felt they could really improve their hiring process or at least the person doing the hiring.