Applied through a referral, which I think accelerated the timeline a bit. Total elapsed time from app to offer was about five weeks.
Round 1: recruiter screen, 25 minutes. Standard stuff, comp range, visa status, why Dell. The recruiter was genuinely knowledgeable about the team I was applying to, which was a nice change from the usual phone screen where they're reading a script.
Round 2: technical screen with a staff eng. One coding problem, medium difficulty. The twist was they asked me to walk through how I'd test it, not just solve it. No LeetCode grinding required but you need to actually think about edge cases out loud.
Round 3: two-hour virtual onsite. System design first (I got something like: design a notification system for a high-volume enterprise product). Then 45 min behavioral with the hiring manager. She used structured STAR pretty explicitly. Asked about a time I had to push back on leadership, a time a project failed, why I wanted to work at Dell specifically.
The "why Dell" question caught me slightly underprepared. They actually care. I gave a decent answer about scale and enterprise infrastructure but I could feel her probing for conviction.
Offer came fast after that. Solid package for Round Rock area. Not Bay Area numbers but the cost of living math works out.