Qordoba Interview Questions
& Process

The interview process began with a chat with the CTO, my potential manager. It was pretty casual, but they threw in some technical questions. Then there was a phone interview with a backend engineer and an MLE. No live coding from what I recall, but definitely a lot of technical questions about feature engineering, algorithms, models, and even some software engineering basics. The final round was a full day of interviews on-site with the DS team, backend engineers, and the founders. Most of it was conversational with technical questions mixed in, except for one 45-minute session that was a deep dive into technical topics like how common models work, model selection for a given problem, and performance tuning. I got an offer pretty quickly afterwards. It was a fast and straightforward process, and I felt it was fair.

So I started with a casual coffee chat with the CEO to get a feel for the company, what the job entails, and their future product ideas. Then the real interviews began with a meeting with the co-founders, followed by an onsite where I met with folks from Product, Operations, and Design. The next part of the onsite was a product case study, and finally, I had a virtual meeting with several engineering and data science leads. It was great getting to meet so many different teams, especially the main engineering folks. I got plenty of time to ask my questions during and after the interviews. I also played around with the product myself and read up on recent customer feedback. Everyone I talked to was sharp, grounded, full of good vibes, and just really nice. It was particularly helpful to connect with some long-time employees who have a lot of history with the company and could share insights on how it's grown.

The hiring process at Qordoba was surprisingly swift, mainly because the cofounders are really good at identifying candidates who would fit their company culture. If they find someone they think aligns with their values, they move fast. It started with a quick chat with the CEO about my background and the company's future plans. After that, I had a phone interview with the CTO where I answered a few questions, and then I was invited for an onsite interview. The onsite lasted about two hours, split between the CEO and the CTO. We delved deeper into the company's direction and how I could contribute to those advancements, and the CTO also asked me to build something using their platform. The whole process wrapped up in about two weeks and was a very positive experience!

Had a first phone chat with the CEO, then a few more in-person meetings with her over the next few weeks. After that, I had some more in-person chats with the other co-founder and some marketing folks, plus some calls with board members. The whole thing took about a month from start to offer.