Rackspace Technology Systems Engineer Interview Questions
& Process

I applied online and got an email for a virtual interview through HireVue about 2 days later. There were 13 timed questions, a mix of video answers, short answers, and multiple choice. After submitting, the interview goes to the recruiter, and they said to wait up to 7 business days for a review. The recruiter called me about 3 weeks after that to set up a 1-hour in-person interview with two team leads, which was more of a personality interview, and then a 1-hour technical interview with two team members. The tech interview covered DNS, RAID, AD, SQL, Windows commands, and Server, but surprisingly no clustering questions, even though they mentioned I lacked clustering experience later. I'd suggest using a whiteboard for the technical part. A week after my interviews, the recruiter contacted me to say I wasn't selected because of a perceived lack of SQL, Clustering, and AD experience, which was strange given the interview content. Watch out for lots of follow-up questions in the technical part.

I applied online and after Rackspace reviewed my application, I got a link for a Hirevue interview. It's a web-based interview and they wanted it back the same week. The Hirevue had technical questions answered on webcam and some typed and multiple-choice questions too. After finishing the Hirevue, a recruiter called to set up a phone interview. This call was more technical, and they said it was okay to admit if I didn't know an answer, which happened a couple of times. Later that same day, after the phone interview, the recruiter contacted me again to schedule an in-person interview with two panels. The first panel asked a lot of technical questions, like the phone interview but it felt more intense. The second panel had two managers who focused more on my personality, background, and customer service skills.

After applying for the job, I got an email to set up a phone interview. The interviewer was nice, but the call quality was so bad I could barely hear anything. He offered to repeat himself, but that didn't help much. Some questions were super specific about MS SQL, MySQL, or Apache settings. Normally, these wouldn't be a problem, but when combined with other things like OpenStack, it was tough to recall everything instantly. A simple fix would be to ask what technologies they're focusing on beforehand and to review config files. I've been a Linux Admin for over 8 years, but I still missed easy questions because they were too niche, I was stressed, and I only caught half of what was asked. Plus, when I asked for clarification on a specific tech, the interviewer mistook it for my answer. Honestly, this was probably the worst interview ever.