EliseAI Software Engineer Interview Questions
& Process

My offer from EliseAI was rescinded even after I had already accepted it and gone through 5 interview rounds plus an on-site. They claimed 'goals and priorities being misaligned' as the reason. I'd be really cautious if you're thinking about this company. For some background, I had requested to push my start date back by two weeks for a planned vacation, but they refused and asked me to cut my vacation short. When I asked for them to reconsider, they pulled the offer. Regardless of the real reason, it's a terrible look for the company to pull an offer and then cite misaligned priorities after all those interviews with engineers and senior leaders to assess my fit.

The process was pretty good, but really intense. There were 2 screening rounds that ended with code reads, and then the final onsite which included coding, system design, and culture interviews with leadership. The system design part can be unpredictable and challenging, so it's worth looking into their products thoroughly. The leadership team is also quite tight-lipped.

So I got contacted by the Chief of Staff, who was super nice and told me about the interview process. Both him and the recruiter said it would be three steps: first, a non-tech chat with an engineer, then a tech interview with another engineer, and finally a systems design chat with a senior engineer. But, like, it didn't really go down like that. The first interview actually had tech questions, which I wasn't ready for. And the last interview ended up being a coding problem instead of the systems design thing they said it would be. Because of this, I felt totally blindsided and unprepared for each part, which messed up my performance and made me look less qualified than I am. Everyone was nice and professional, but the whole process felt unclear, and I think it could have been set up better to help candidates do their best. This whole mix-up in expectations is probably why I didn't get an offer.