Skytap Interview Questions
& Process

So, I had this initial call with the recruiter, you know, just a standard intro to the company, the team I'd be joining (Tools and Infrastructure), and how the interviews would go. It went pretty smoothly, and we scheduled a phone interview for the next week. The next step was a phone interview with a dev manager, but it wasn't the manager for the team I applied to. It was more of a chat about my background and what I did in school, no technical stuff at all. A couple days after that, the recruiter set up the on-site. It was a packed day: hiring manager, a dev manager from a different team, an SDE, and a director. The hiring manager interview was longer, 90 minutes, while the others were 60. The first part of that one was about their tech and goals, plus chatting about my experience. Then, I got two coding questions: one was the classic fizz-buzz, and the other was finding the lowest common ancestor in a binary tree. Pretty standard stuff. The second interview was with a manager, and it was a bit different – they asked me to pick an activity and design a software system for it. I went with tennis. It was like designing a game or an emulator, basically testing OOP concepts. After that, we had lunch with the two morning interviewers, which was pretty casual, mostly a fit check. The third interview was with an SDE, and the task was to code the pancake sorting algorithm. It was straightforward, and we talked about ways to optimize it. The last interview was with the director. It was mostly a discussion about the hiring team and how my background in ML and pattern recognition from school could be useful. They threw in a super quick coding question on control structures at the end. Got the offer the next day.

The whole thing started with their recruiting agency for a preliminary check. After that, I spoke with my potential manager. Then I was given a project to build, connecting Skytap and Azure. While I was doing that, I had 7 more interviews with people all over the company, from the CEO to the support team. It took about 7 weeks. Finally, I gave a presentation and demo of my work. They said thanks but no thanks right after. I asked for feedback to understand what changed their minds, especially since everyone was positive and we were discussing salary and benefits, but got no reply. Weirdly, their recruiters reached out twice more saying I was a great fit, and I had to tell them they'd already passed on me. I should have checked Glassdoor to save time and not get my hopes up.

So after the recruiter set it up, I had a phone screen with the QA Manager, can't remember much. It went fine, and they actually moved things up, setting up my next round just two days later. It was a 5-part interview day: met with a System Architect/Developer, an SDET, a Network Engineer, then had a group lunch, and finally the VP of Engineering. Cool thing, no one asked me any random trivia, the questions were more about making me think or discuss things. The first guy was great, asked a lot about my QA experience, especially around growing teams, what makes them tick or flop. The second interview was with another Test Engineer, pretty chill, all about my testing background. They did throw in a small Python coding question, like 10 lines, just to see if I knew my stuff and could explain it. The third interview, with the Network Engineer, was a bit out there for a QA role. They wanted me to explain a Layer 7 network call and what happens in the layers below it, not expecting me to know it all but to see if I could figure it out when explained. The lunch was supposed to be for 'fit', but honestly, nobody really talked to me, just amongst themselves, felt kinda weird but I jumped in when I could. The last interview with the VP was kinda rough, for both of us. Some questions felt more like a feature dev interview, and about stuff I haven't done recently. Like, asked about a past project I'd do differently, and what I was proud of. Then came a C API testing question, which I kinda blew because I blanked and also because I'm rusty with C and never claimed to be using it lately. They didn't ask anything else after that, just ended it.

The interview process started with a recruiter call, followed by a hiring manager chat, and then a technical phone interview. After that, there were 6 onsite interviews. They also did background checks with my references. It was a lot of time and effort for me, my references, and the interview panel. All questions were relevant to the job description and my experience. Sadly, the recruiter called back to say they'd changed the requirements and were looking for a different skill set, which is confusing after I had a good impression of the company and its people. It feels like a waste of time.