LendUp Interview Questions
& Process

I started with a recruiter call, which was pretty good. The recruiter was smart and friendly. Then I had a phone interview with the hiring manager. She seemed uninterested from the start, like she'd already decided and was just going through the motions. She asked for examples of relevant experience, but when I asked if that was enough, she just said 'Alright, thank you.' without answering my question, showing she wasn't listening. She was also 4 minutes late and cut the conversation short to ask if I had questions with only 10 minutes left. When I asked one, she yawned while answering. It was disappointing, especially since her bio made her seem cool.

So, the process was kinda long. First, there was a technical phone screen, and it took them about two weeks to get back to me about moving forward. Then, scheduling the onsite took a really long time, like 3-4 weeks, because they said the team had no availability. The onsite itself was about 6-7 hours. The interviewers were nice and smart, and the staff were helpful, but it felt like there was a lack of transparency and trust. The conversations were mostly me giving information and technical knowledge, experience, and opinions on their problems, but when I asked questions about their approaches, the answers were evasive or non-existent. It felt like I was doing consulting without getting much back. Ultimately, I got a rejection email over 5 weeks after the onsite, which I had almost forgotten about.

I sent in my application online and then reached out to the recruiter via LinkedIn. The recruiter replied back the same day and asked for my availability. The recruiter was really fast with responses and made sure things ran smoothly, which was surprising given what some reviews say. But, during the actual interview part, there was a lot of background noise from the recruiter's side, making it hard to hear the questions, and I had to ask them to repeat themselves multiple times. I was told to get in touch if I didn't hear back. When I emailed the recruiter, they let me know I wasn't chosen for the Data Analyst – People Analytics position. The interview was actually for the data science role.

The CTO reached out to me initially, and we had a coffee chat where I was impressed by his technical insight and LendUp's mission, leading to a follow-up. The next step was an hour-long screen with an engineering lead, covering our work histories, some pair coding on Coderpad, and a discussion about LendUp's engineering practices. Following that, I had an onsite interview lasting about 4 hours, which included three technical interviews and a soft skills session with a PM. The technical interviews touched on algorithms, system design, and code design, with the option of using a laptop or whiteboard. The coding problems were designed to assess approach and communication rather than a single correct answer, with complexity increasing via added constraints. I was impressed by the seniority and caliber of the engineers, which is important for my growth as a Senior Engineer. Two days later, I received an offer with a market-level salary, which I accepted.