went through their loop for a senior backend role, Amsterdam-based. here's the structure: recruiter screen, 30 min. mostly logistics, sponsorship, timeline. technical screen with a hiring-side engineer. ~60 min. they gave me a short design problem, not leetcode-style, more like "you have this microservice and it needs to handle X, how do you approach it." pretty open-ended. take-home. 4-hour window, realistic problem set around an API design scenario. they want clean code and a README explaining tradeoffs. the README matters more than people expect. system design loop. 1 hour. I got a question about designing a hotel inventory availability system. not abstract, very on-domain. they clearly value domain knowledge about what they actually do. competency interview. 4 x 45 min. each interviewer owns one competency area (delivery, collaboration, ownership, innovation). deep behavioral dive, STAR format, they do push back.
total timeline was 4 weeks from first screen to verbal offer. Amsterdam relocation was required for this role, which they were upfront about.
what caught me off guard: how much they care about the take-home README. like, almost as much as the code itself. write that thing like it's a real RFC.