Palantir Technologies Software Engineer Interview Questions
& Process
Real candidates share what happened, how many rounds they had,
and how the experience turned out.
Based on 1,022 interview experiences · FREE TO READ
Candidate interview experiences
First-hand accounts from people who interviewed at Palantir Technologies.
Palantir Technologies
Software Engineer Intern
Intern Average Positive experience Decline offer 3 rounds
Interview process
Recruiter call Technical screen Take home Onsite Panel Technical screen Recruiter call
Interview formats
Behavioral Coding Technical System Design
First up was a behavioral phone screen followed by an online assessment on Hackerrank. Next, we had a 2-hour session that included a decomposition round and a learning round. The decomp part was pretty open-ended, and the learning round involved some coding. Finally, there was a Hiring Manager round which was split evenly between behavioral questions and a LeetCode-style question.
Confirmed questions2 questions
- Could you tell me what sparks your interest in Palantir?
- Please be prepared to articulate in detail your reasons for caring about our mission (i.e., mission alignment).
Palantir Technologies
Software Engineer
Entry Average Positive experience No offer 2 rounds
Interview process
Recruiter call Technical screen
Interview formats
Technical Coding
The interview process went really well. I was contacted prior. The interviewer was professional and on time. The interview itself was interesting compared to other tech companies. It made me think more compared to typical coding interviews, for example, there were decomposition questions and questions that see how you're able to solve impossible problems.
Confirmed questions1 question
- How would you approach solving this impossible problem, and please articulate your thought process?
Palantir Technologies
Software Engineer
Mid Difficult Neutral experience No offer 3 rounds
Interview process
Recruiter call Technical screen Technical screen
Interview formats
Technical Behavioral
A recruiter from Palantir contacted me on LinkedIn, and I then went through two more stages: the analysis (technical) interview and the learning & decomp (technical) interview. The analysis interview was like a simpler version of the decomp interview, where I had to break down a problem and discuss my solution, taking into account the interviewer's suggestions. The learning interview wasn't overly challenging but left little room for errors. The decomposition part felt quite difficult for me, mainly because of the specific kind of thinking it demanded for the scenario presented. I did not have any LeetCode-style interview rounds.
Confirmed questions1 question
- Tell me about an interest you have outside of work and explain how it contributes to your effectiveness as an engineer.
Palantir Technologies Software Engineer Interview Questions
Quoted word for word from Palantir Technologies interview reports.
“Reverse a given singly linked list, like 1 -> 2 -> 3 -> 4 -> 5 becoming 5 -> 4 -> 3 -> 2 -> 1. The input is a linked list, and the output should be the reversed linked list. Importantly, you can only change the pointers, not the node values. Keep in mind the list might be empty or have just one node.”
Read reports →“What is the time complexity in big O notation for looking up a value in a hash map?”
Read reports →“Given a card game with multiple players, where each player has 5 cards and in each round one card is placed in the middle, describe how the player with the highest card wins that round.”
Read reports →“Design a class for allocating and storing client information, considering server capacity and using a PriorityQueue for server balancing.”
Read reports →“Could you parse this dictionary of software usage logs and rank the top users by screen time, active user status, and page views?”
Read report →“Was there a LeetCode Medium question on the tagged list for technical? The question was 3006.”
Read report →“Which team did you want to be on, as this determined the style of DSA they asked.”
Read report →“Design a system for a hobby portal that allows employees to find each other based on shared interests.”
Read report →“Given the possibility of multiple questions in the technical round, focus on the first one. The question involved designing a round-robin system using hashmaps and lists.”
Read report →Formats, difficulty and experience
Across all 1,022 Palantir Technologies interview reports.