Invitae Software Engineer Interview Questions
& Process

Overall great experience as far as interviews go. It was thorough and engaging. They were efficient and worked to get through the whole process as fast as I wanted. They answered my questions openly and spent time to answer questions I had. Basic process applying fully remote during pandemic: * Recruiter Screen: Great for finding out more about the role and their interview process. * Manager Call (1 hour): Hiring manager for the team I may be working with talked about the team asked questions validating my knowledge and resume. * Code Test (1 hour): On HackerRank. Never received any feedback on the code so I'm pretty sure this is a basic filtering step to see if you can write code that passes the tests. * Virtual On-site: Challenge 1 (1 hour): They provided code and then asked to add one of five features to the code base. 2 backend, 1 backend-api, 2 frontend options. Thought it was a good test to just see how I solved a problem. Two interviewers were there to ask questions and interact with. * Virtual On-Site: Challenge 2 (1 hour): Same as challenge 1 but with two new interviewers to get a different prospective. * Virtual On-Site: Whiteboard Challenge (45 min): This was an architecture and problem scoping challenge. Given a scenario (e.g. user wants to do X given constraints Y) how do you solve this. It was really fun chatting with the interviewer and figuring out a solution. They could probably plan to use a tool like draw.io or lucidcharts to improve the experience because doing it using google slides was clunky. * Virtual On-Site: Culture Interview (45 min). This was an interview by someone in a different part of the company. Had a great time talking to one of their lab scientists now product manager. * Virtual On-Site: Selling and Closing (45 min). This was a 1:1 with the upper technical leadership (engineering director) to answer any questions I had. "Selling and closing" is probably not a great title for this, don't worry it's not pushy. * Follow-up: They were very willing to do any followups I asked for. Their offer was good. Seems like a great place to work! What stood out to me was the high quality of collaboration in their culture, people who are willing to step up and help others. Also, many people mentioned that team switches happen often (6-18months) which is great for keeping things fresh and seeing lots of the company; these same people also said it was not done chaotically which would be the worry. Questions I asked them: Q: How do you feel supported in your growth and learning? A: Leads are supportive and care about careers of people. Teams change up often and individuals desires for growth are factored in. Q: How is performance evaluated and rewarded? A: Annual reviews with monthly feedback collected from managers and coworkers. Work is rewarded well with promotions and equity. Q: How has invitae handled being remote? A: Invitae had a strong remote component before the pandemic and has transitioned fairly well into almost fully remote (non-lab based roles). Overall it was a great interview process for getting to know the company and them getting to know me.

It started with a chat with the recruiter, who was pretty chill. Then came the HackerRank challenge. It was relevant to the company's work, which was a plus, and you had to figure out some requirements yourself. Definitely get comfortable with HackerRank and debugging on there. I passed with like a minute to spare, but it's not about perfection. After that, I spoke with a director who looked at my HackerRank submission and mostly asked about my experience and fit. The final stage was a marathon Zoom interview, split over two days. Day 1 was all about code. They gave me a repo 24 hours prior, so I checked it out. I worked on tickets from a Trello board, picking my own tasks. The key was to talk through my thinking and ask for help when needed. Then came the cultural interview – just chat and show interest. The last interview was a system design one, using Google Slides, which was a bit clunky. They asked about how user interactions translate to backend processes, so understanding full-stack, databases, and cloud architecture helps. I got the offer within a couple of weeks. It's a tough process, but they get a good sense of you.

Haven't gotten that far, it started off with an intro from the recruiter and then a coding question. I had to reach out to the recruiter because he forgot about the interview. He was confused when I called and didn't know my name and also didn't seem sorry about it. The coding question on HackerRank was like 'Here you go, figure it out.' I decided to close the question because I already had reservations about continuing.