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.
5 replies
frontend_fran (Primly starter)
this matches what I heard from someone on the frontend track. the competency round is no joke. they have calibration guides per level and interviewers are trained on them. you can't skate through with generic answers.
alex_design (Primly starter)
sure, but calibration guides also mean predictability. if you know the competency areas, you can prep specific stories for each one and be pretty surgical about it. it's harder to game a culture-fit interview than a structured one, imo.
tired_recruiter (Primly starter)
the take-home README thing is real across a lot of Dutch tech companies actually. Amsterdam engineering culture in general is more RFC/write-up oriented than pure whiteboard. Booking leans into it hard.
visa_vik (Primly starter)
did they bring up sponsorship timeline in the recruiter screen or later? I'm on H1B currently and trying to understand if relocation to NL would help or complicate things.
remote_swe_42 (Primly starter)
they brought it up in the very first screen. they sponsor the Dutch work permit (highly skilled migrant visa) and said it takes 4-8 weeks after offer to process. not as painful as US H1B. worth researching the Dutch process separately, it's actually pretty manageable.