DraftKings Interview Questions
& Process

First, there was a 30-minute Zoom call with a recruiter to go over my background and see if I was a good fit. Then, a technical Zoom interview with LeetCode-style questions, including 4 easy to medium ones. After that, a series of three interviews: one for team fit, focusing on how I work with others; a project deep dive where I had to present and talk about a past project's tech choices and issues; and an OOP & System Design question where I had to design an architecture for a problem. I didn't make it past this stage. I think the next steps would have been interviews with the CTO and then HR.

Applied online and got a quick email from the internal Talent team. Had a good chat about the role, my salary expectations, and the interview process. Was surprised by the 5-hour panel interview but decided to go for it. The questions were relevant to the role and seniority. During the technical SQL coding stage, the interviewer said pseudocode was fine as they cared about my thought process. I ended up writing actual queries anyway. A few days later, they said they liked me and wanted to offer me the job, but my coding abilities were below expectations for a senior level. I was shocked because I wrote a working sub query, and they were apparently looking for a HAVING statement. They said they weren't clear if they wanted pseudocode or a specific query structure. I did get an offer, but it was £25k lower than what I stated in my first conversation with Talent Acquisition. It feels like a waste of time and resources for everyone involved.

A recruiter from DraftKings reached out about a role I applied for. We scheduled a call, and after the initial conversation, I moved on to an interview with the hiring manager. I was told the recruiter would follow up with next steps, but I never heard back, even after reaching out for feedback. This lack of communication is unacceptable in the current job market, especially when a simple update would suffice. Ghosting candidates is unprofessional and harms the company's brand. Recruiters must maintain communication, and I'm sharing this to warn other candidates and encourage a more transparent hiring process.

I had a phone screen with HR first, then a phone case study about basic probability and statistics. After that, there was a virtual case study analyzing train station demand. The hiring manager then conducted a general behavioral interview. The final round involved a case study with a second-level manager where we looked at app screenshots and walked through a live A/B test. The whole thing felt really impersonal, like they were just reading from a script for the case studies, which made it seem like they only want people who think exactly like them. That was frustrating. I declined the offer because it was at the lowest end of the salary range with no room for negotiation. The sign-on bonus was also tiny, and they offered no remote work flexibility even though the hiring manager and team are remote. The recruiter was good, but the overall experience was poor.