Cloudflare Solutions Engineer Interview Questions
& Process

So first I chatted with the hiring manager informally, then I spoke to the lead recruiter about the role and salary stuff. After that, I had a technical interview, and then there was a panel interview where I had to demo one of their products. The last steps were a meeting with a director and then a chat with a C-suite person.

The recruiter was cool. The hiring manager screening was great. The technical screening was kind of weird though. The interviewer asked vague questions like 'Tell me everything you know about HTTP' or 'Tell me about proxies,' and it was hard to tell what they were looking for. They also couldn't clarify questions without basically giving the answer away. They used a lot of acronyms instead of saying the full names of things. Plus, they started making up scenarios that didn't even fit the job requirements. Honestly, their whole recruiting process takes way too long; an interview every other week is just too much. They really need to standardize and speed it up.

The recruiter sent an email with a link to set up an interview. I thought it was a screening call with the recruiter, but it was actually with the hiring manager. The hiring manager seemed uninterested, moving around his house and doing chores like making coffee and cleaning. He only wanted to talk about industry topics, not the role itself. The next day, another email arrived with a different mystery interviewer, who turned out to be a junior SE. This person was also disengaged, frequently looking away from the screen as if distracted. I didn't receive any preparation materials from the recruiter, so I was completely unprepared for a technical interview. There was a total lack of communication about what to expect in the hiring process.