Ocient Interview Questions
& Process

Decent enough interview cycle for a senior engineering role. Recruiter was friendly and accommodating of my schedule since I was on holiday when they first reached out to me. We started interviewing a few days after I returned home and I made it through three rounds and got to the final round, as the hiring manager put it. Since the conversation naturally evolved to showing off some side projects of mine via screen share, where I walked the hiring manager and senior on the team through the code, showed them how things got deployed and how I built a security model the application and infrastructure, they decided to not give me a coding assessment but I was asked a set of deeply technical questions and scenarios-which seemed fair-and I got excellent feedback during that my responses were good and right in line with what they were looking for. The recruiter said I should hear from them rapidly as he prefers to keep candidates in the loop and keep things smooth for everyone… …except I didn’t hear back from them for a few weeks so I decided to check the careers page again, the role was no longer present, I email the recruiter for a follow up, and it was only then that I got what looked automated response that the role had been filled. The overall experience was fine I guess, but a little professional courtesy of saying “thank you for interviewing with us but we moved on” would have at least softened the blow from not being chosen for what looked like a pretty interesting job role instead of leaving me to find out on my own after two weeks of radio silence.

Had an initial online assessment that lasted about 1.5 hours. It involved a substantial problem that was tough to finish all test cases within the time limit. The tasks weren't technically complex but required a significant amount of work. Following that, there were two coding interviews, which weren't overly challenging. The process involved collaborating with the interviewer to solve problems incrementally. Then, there was a discussion with the hiring manager, which was mainly conversational. The next stage is a system design review, which I haven't completed yet.

I applied to Ocient a while ago and made it pretty far, but then got ghosted. I recently reapplied for a similar role since I was still interested in the company. I was happy with the HR communication this time and felt like I showed a lot of interest. I got to the third round, but they ended up going with other candidates they felt were a better fit. I'm not sure if I'd try again; they seemed to be looking for very specific high-level skills that didn't quite match the job description. They mentioned I was the only one interviewed up to that point, but then said there were stronger candidates, which felt a little contradictory. Hopefully, others have better luck if you decide to apply.

The interviews were cordial. I first spoke with a recruiter for a screening call. My second interview was with a Director who offered me a role at a lower level, instead of the role to which I applied. After making it clear that I was not interested in continuing with the interview process for a lower level role, I was told that I would be contacted for an interview for a role at the level to which I applied. A couple weeks later, I was given another interview. Toward the end of the interview, I asked the interviewer to verbally confirm the role. I was told that it was the same lower level role as before. I thanked the team for their time and declined to continue any further interviews.