interviewing at Merck in about a month for a senior software engineer role on their clinical data infrastructure team. doing my homework now.
found a decent amount on glassdoor but a lot of it is 2-3 years old and feels like a different company (they've apparently done a big digital transformation push since then).
if you've done a Merck loop in the past 12-18 months, any function, would love to hear: how many rounds, in what format any technical or case component you had to do what seemed to actually matter vs what felt like checkbox stuff anything that surprised you
not looking for vibes, looking for data.
5 replies
de_derek
did a data engineering loop there 8 months ago. 5 rounds: recruiter, HM, two technical, one behavioral with HR. technical rounds were SQL and Python focused, not leetcode-style. one round was basically 'here is a messy dataset, tell me what you'd do with it.' they cared a lot about whether you could explain your reasoning out loud. not just the answer.
staff_steph
went through for a staff engineer role in their enterprise architecture group about 4 months ago. loop was 6 rounds. no whiteboard coding. system design was the main technical component, heavily focused on integration patterns and API governance, which makes sense for pharma. the behavioral rounds were the real bar. they want specific examples, not frameworks. i had one interviewer flat out say 'tell me the actual number, i don't need context first.' interesting style.
quietquit_quincy
that's really useful, thanks. 'tell me the actual number first' is a specific style to prep for. so lead with the result, then walk back to the setup?
staff_steph
exactly what it sounds like. STAR but backwards sometimes. RATS. not the most natural way to tell a story but once you know to expect it you can adapt.
frontend_fran
applied to a product engineer role there 6 months ago, made it to the panel. the tech screen was a take-home, 2-3 hours, pretty reasonable. they were reviewing for code quality and testing, not just whether it worked. the panel itself had a lot of 'tell me about a time you worked with ambiguous requirements.' that question came up in two separate rounds with different interviewers. prep one really solid answer for that one.