Drawbridge Interview Questions
& Process

A friend at DB recommended me for an interview. The first three phone interviews went great and the HR coordinator was very communicative. After those, I didn't hear anything back even after emailing a few times, so I figured that was it. But then, three months later, they reached out again and asked if I wanted to keep going. I said yes and went to the NY office for a 2-hour meeting with four interviewers. It was a really relaxed and positive meeting, and everyone seemed great, driven, and smart. A couple of weeks after that, I got an offer which I accepted.

I applied and Drawbridge got back to me really fast which I was stoked about. We set up a phone interview with the hiring manager, but they had to cancel the day of :-(. They apologized and rescheduled though. The first call was pretty basic, just some hypothetical questions about the industry to see if I knew my stuff. After that, I went in person for about 3-4 hours and met with 4 different people, including some senior engineering folks and the hiring manager. I think I did okay, but based on the questions, they might have been looking for someone more than just a TAM. Everyone was really professional and nice, so I wasn't stressed at all.

This Java developer interview process was pretty quick, taking about three weeks. I think I got the call because of my academic research on a project similar to what the company does. I actually missed my first interview due to a time zone mix-up, but the recruiter was cool and rescheduled. The first part was a 45-minute technical interview over Skype, coding on Coderpad. It was mostly standard algorithms, nothing too crazy. The interviewer was nice and shared good info about the company and the role. About a week later, I got an invite for the next round. It was supposed to be onsite, but since I was on the East Coast, it became a 3-hour Skype session with three interviewers. Each part was an hour, involving coding on Coderpad. They asked about my projects and then gave me a programming problem. The challenges weren't super hard, with a focus on Object-Oriented principles. The interviews were friendly, with helpful hints. Understanding those hints was key. A week after that, I had a final Skype chat with the manager. It felt more like a discussion, though I did get a programming question. The manager shared insights on the approach, and I explained my reasoning. We also talked about my interests, job expectations, and salary, which I discussed honestly. A few days later, the recruiter called with a job offer and a great compensation package. Some thoughts for improvement: please don't use Jobvite emails, they're hard to track. It would be great to have East Coast candidates come onsite to better grasp the work culture and get more company/position insights. While Coderpad is better than Google Docs, I prefer whiteboard coding for visualizing thoughts with flowcharts and diagrams. Even though I liked the position and salary, I decided to decline because I got an offer for my dream project elsewhere. Good luck to those interviewing at Drawbridge!

I had a phone/skype screen where I got asked a simple Frequency Map/Set question. After that, they set up a 5-hour skype interview. Three interviewers asked me standard puzzle-like programming questions, including one for the Knight's tour. I coded it correctly, but the interviewer insisted on running it for the 8x8 board, which was problematic due to the vast number of combinations. Two other interviewers asked about Map-Reduce/Spark-like problems. One of them was experienced and reasonable, but the other tried to complicate things by adding specific constraints to my solutions, seeming determined to prove me wrong. I decided it was pointless to argue with him, which says a lot about the team's mindset.