Mixpanel Software Engineer Interview Questions
& Process

The whole process felt quite awkward. It started with a recruiter screen where they did a heavy sell, which was a bit strange, but I went along with it. Then came the tech screen, which was pretty easy with some weird follow-up questions about language vectors, but overall it was okay. The interviewer was nice. After that was the manager screen, which was super confrontational. They were 10 minutes late and then grilled me about my past projects, asking what my previous managers would rate me. It was a very cold interview and I was ready to tell the recruiter I didn't want to continue, but they felt the same way.

I was reached out to about a Senior Developer position. It didn't quite line up with my recent experience in a management role, but I thought, hey why not. I've used the product quite a bit and I think the specific tasks for this role seem interesting. They really put me through the ringer. A hiring manager screen, technical rounds, more soft skill rounds, and even a portfolio review! This last interview is extremely uncommon for any engineering position, but they needed to know that I had many intersecting design and leadership skills--including the ability to present and persuade. It was a perfect fit for me personally, really quite tailored to my background. Which is rare. It sounded like they required the same for other candidates, which I can imagine being a little frustrated about if they didn't have my exact experience and strengths. Anyway, what really helped me shine was the incredibly helpful talent partner, who did absolutely everything in their power to set me up for success. They were honest, transparent, and made themselves fully available to me for any questions I had. They also updated me like clockwork on feedback and status. When I had concerns, they got the VP to talk through it with me directly, who I'm sure is a very busy person. This was also very much appreciated. When interviewing with several opportunities, you really get a full spectrum of professionalism and competence. I can speak with authority when I say that interviewing at Mixpanel has been a highlight for me, despite being quite an intense process.

I found the job online and applied. After that, I got this programming quiz from TripleByte with 42 multiple choice questions. 30 of them were about coding and the other 12 were about systems design. The first 30 coding questions were pretty easy, like finding bugs, figuring out how long code would take to run, and calculating the output of functions using languages like Python, Ruby, Java, and C. The systems design questions, though, were really hard. They were all about systems and the choices weren't clear-cut, making it tough to pick the right answer and show off what I know. It's weird because in the real world, you don't use multiple choice to make big infrastructure decisions. Anyway, a day after I finished the quiz, I heard back that I didn't make it to the next round. I'm pretty bummed about it.