Thought Machine Site Reliability Engineer Interview Questions
& Process

The interview process was smooth and comprised three stages: an initial introductory call, a take-home assessment, and a final on-site interview which included three separate parts. The initial call and take-home test were fine. The on-site began with SRE-style questions where a system was presented, and I had to debug it. This was followed by two coding challenges similar to LeetCode medium and medium-hard problems, though not directly from the platform. I think I did well overall but might have missed one of the coding questions. While they didn't specify a strict passing score, I suspect candidates are evaluated relative to each other rather than against a fixed benchmark. The whole process was notably quick and efficient, with prompt communication, but I found it odd to be tested on algorithms for a role where they aren't heavily utilized.

The interview process at Thought Machine is quite unique and it’s good in my opinion, because it allows you to get to learn quite a lot about the company, your future colleagues and the product, before joining. It starts with a phone chat with a recruiter, then a social event with a presentation about the company where you get to meet some of the current employees (everyone is very friendly and helpful in answering questions about Thought Machine), then a take home coding task, then a 3 part on-site interview and possibly an on-site chat after that. Make sure you brush up some of the basic algorithms and data structures before the on-site interview.

Applied online, took about a week. First was a chat with HR about the job, company, and culture. Then, a take-home technical assignment. Before that, I had a call with a VP who discussed company product revenues and technology. The technical task itself was okay, basically a Python script to grab data from endpoints. Python isn't my main language, but I managed to finish and submit it. I got some feedback, which would have been useful if I were going for a developer role; they seemed to judge me on programming skills with a task unrelated to the actual SRE job. I think they might be a bit mixed up about the role, maybe wanting a Python dev instead of an SRE or DevOps person.