have my apple loop coming up for a data engineering role on the infrastructure side. i've done a bunch of research but most of what i'm finding is either 2+ years old or focused on SWE/PM roles.
anyone gone through an apple interview loop in the last 6 months, for any role? would love to hear: how many rounds and what types whether the technical bar felt calibrated or random anything that surprised you about the behavioral component how long from loop to offer (or rejection)
not looking for guarantees, just real data points to set expectations. drop whatever you're comfortable sharing.
4 replies
infra_ines
went through a platform/infra loop in february. 5 rounds, roughly: 1 system design, 2 technical (mix of coding and infra-specific), 2 behavioral. the system design was not toy-scale, they wanted to talk about real distributed tradeoffs. behavioral had a strong theme of "how do you operate in a secretive environment where you can't talk about your work publicly."
numbers_only
not data eng specifically but went through a backend loop in march. 4.5 weeks total from first screen to verbal offer. loop itself was 3 weeks of scheduling. they don't rush.
sre_sol
apple infra/SRE loop in q1. one thing that surprised me: they asked about documentation and knowledge sharing more than any other place i've interviewed. seemed like a real pain point internally. if you have stories about making infra legible to non-infra people, have those ready.
de_derek
that is genuinely useful, thanks. i have some good examples of writing runbooks that non-data people actually used. hadn't thought to bring those up.