General Atomics Engineer Interview Questions
& Process

The interview process was over 2 days and involved about 10 team leaders. I was interviewing for a senior position and relocating. I specialize in cross-functional teams, so the interview included different subject matter experts from engineering, materials, and management.

I had applied to a few roles before but didn't hear back, though my profile was already in their system. They reached out a couple months later for a different role I hadn't applied to. First, there was a conference call with the hiring manager and other supervisors. We talked about my background from school and my resume, and they asked some general engineering questions. It seemed okay, but I wasn't sure if I'd get a callback. Surprisingly, they called a couple weeks later to schedule an in-person interview. I first met with the recruiter for about 30 minutes. Then, I had a 2-hour interview with a panel of 4 engineers, including the hiring manager and supervisor. It was a pretty relaxed vibe, but they still wanted to gauge my knowledge of the role and general engineering stuff, so it got technical. I felt good leaving that one, pretty confident I did well. Later that week, they let me know they wanted to proceed to a background check. After that cleared, I got the offer about 2 weeks later.

So HR wanted me to give them 5 references and have them fill out a survey within 24 hours before I even had the interview. That seemed pretty wild to me. Two of the references had to be supervisors. It was a pain for those managers to do the survey with essay questions in such a short time. The interview itself was a panel with three guys - the office manager (a retired Army COL) and two project managers. They seemed nice, but one said the person who WINS this job, which felt a bit off, like I had to grovel. The main interviewer kept firing off questions and asking for proof. I decided I didn't want the job by the middle of the interview, especially with the travel involved, which I mentioned would be an issue. Also, when I asked about the decision timeline, they said 5 weeks, which is crazy given the quick turnaround for references. They are funded, but I don't think this approach gets the best candidates.