Parachute Health Engineer Interview Questions
& Process

This company's recruitment process on the engineering side was really unprofessional, despite the nice and intelligent engineers and product people I spoke with. It's a 7-round interview process that could easily be 3 rounds. After what I thought was the final round, the recruiter, who was disorganized, called to check in. She mentioned positive feedback and asked about other offers. She then lowballed me on salary, claiming it was my initial range, despite the posting's range being 145-195 and 145 being insultingly low for a senior role. I stated salary would be a factor due to the HCOL city I'm relocating to. She said they'd update me later. By the end of the week, an automated email said they were moving on with other candidates. I got no feedback when asking for constructive criticism. It seems they're exploiting the market to hire desperate engineers at low pay. Playing games after 7 rounds is disrespectful and won't build a strong engineering team, as quality engineers often have multiple offers.

So the interview process was pretty long, it had 7 rounds total. First was a 30 min phone screen with HR. Then a 30 min paired coding challenge with a SWE and an EM where I had to write a method to parse a CSV file. After that, a 1 hr behavioral interview with two EMs. Then another 1.5 hr paired coding challenge with one SWE, this time I had to update a live auction app to support silent auctions. Next was a 1 hr architecture design interview with two SWEs and a PM, where I had to figure out the DB tables for adding a survey to a GrubHub-like app. This was followed by a 1 hr system design interview with 2 SWEs, continuing on the architecture topic, where I had to design the system for the GrubHub-like app. The 7th round was supposed to be a culture fit interview with all the EMs, but I didn't make it that far. Everyone I talked to was really nice. Just a heads up, they give you a README to read the problems instead of explaining them verbally. Since I have dyslexia, this added some pressure and I wasn't sure I understood everything perfectly. If they had explained it verbally, I think I would have performed better. But honestly, the problems themselves weren't too hard.

It was a standard process. The first interview had basic entry level questions. It mostly focused on my experience related to the job. They also shared a lot about the company and team, including the size, quarterly meetings, and any required travel.