Outrider (Colorado) Interview Questions
& Process

The interview process was great - the people at Outrider were very helpful throughout the interview process! We started with an initial phone call with a recruiter to check if I was a good fit and if I was interested. Then, there was an interview with the Hiring Manager (Team Lead) where we did a deep dive into my past projects and experience, and they asked a lot of questions on technical concepts relevant to the role. After that, I had a technical interview focused on my coding capabilities in cpp. Finally, there was a technical interview covering domain-specific knowledge on SLAM.

The interview process started with a Hiring Manager chat, followed by a meeting with the Head of AI. Then there were 3 panel interviews. One was focused on coding and top-level design, where I had to discuss a project and a least squares problem. Another part involved implementing a sparse dot product in C++. The last interviewer had poor communication skills and the session felt unplanned, covering multi-object tracking with simple questions like grid search asked in a complicated way. He was also patronizing.

It was a 30 min HR phone call, then a google meet with the hiring manager for a 30 min screening. We chatted about random tech/behavior questions. A day later, I got a rejection email. This company has 5 EEs, but they don't do any in-house designs. They focus on system integration using off-the-shelf hardware, no firmware, no software, no circuit design. It's like a college student project, shopping for parts and integrating them onto a truck for moving trailers in private parking lots. The EEs mainly do cable harnesses, probably working with MEs for drawings, and then shopping for parts and defining electrical ratings for cables. No actual design is involved. I guess they need people to shop for radar/lidar/power distribution/BMS/EV charging stuff. I was rejected right after the interview.

The whole thing took over two months, which was a bummer. I found the job on LinkedIn and applied online. Instead of a quick chat first, the recruiter just booked me with two senior managers, one of them being the hiring manager. That part went fine though. Then I talked to a principal engineer who would report to me, and the tech questions were easy-peasy, it was a good chat. After that, it was a two-day marathon, like 2-3 hours each day. Day one was me presenting my stuff and then a Q&A, followed by meeting a product lead, two engineers who'd report to me, and another senior engineer for more tech talk. Day two, I met the hiring manager and the head of HR/people for a culture and management vibe check. I also chatted with another product lead about how engineering managers and product managers work together. It was a lot and felt repetitive, but hey, I met people and got what they expected: someone to back them up and protect them from startup chaos. It seemed like this role had a lot of turnover, and there was a big fight between engineering and top brass causing stress. I figured I could handle it though. Then, out of nowhere, after all that, they said feedback was great and I was a top candidate, but surprise, an interview with the CTO! They said it was casual, but it was super technical and not really about the job, focusing on low-level design instead of using cloud services, which was weird for a Cloud Manager role. Right after that, they were supposed to schedule another meeting with the CTO, but an hour before it, the recruiter just emailed saying 'no thanks'. It felt like they didn't trust each other up top, which matches what the engineers said about management issues. Maybe it's for the best I didn't get it given all the internal drama they seem to have.