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Went through the full Palantir loop (SWE, L3 equivalent) -- here's what actually mattered

remote_swe_42 · 5 replies

Just finished. Did not get the offer, but I learned a lot, so sharing.

Rounds in order: Recruiter screen, 20 min, mostly logistics and the "why Palantir" question Technical phone screen, 45 min, two medium algo problems (one graph, one interval merging) Onsite: 4 rounds back to back over two days Algo (harder, a variant of topological sort with a twist I hadn't seen) System design (design an alerting system for anomaly detection across distributed sensor data) Decomp (the unique one, below) Behavioral / fit, 45 min

The Decomp round was with a senior engineer who gave me a scenario about tracking movement patterns across a city for public health. No code. Just: break it down, what data do you need, what are the edge cases, how do you handle missing data, what are the tradeoffs between a batch and streaming approach. We went back and forth for 50 minutes. It felt like pairing with a colleague, which was actually kind of fun.

What killed me was probably the behavioral round. They really probe on the defense/government work angle. "Are you comfortable with Palantir's work in [specific area]?" Be prepared to have an actual opinion. I hedged and I think it cost me.

Comp for L3 in NYC: my recruiter quoted a base range of $155k-$185k with significant stock, but I never got to that conversation so take it with salt.

5 replies

infra_ines

the Decomp round is the thing that makes or breaks Palantir for most people i've talked to. either you love ambiguous collaborative problem-solving or you hate it and want a leetcode grind you can prep for. sounds like you handled it fine. the behavioral angle on defense work is genuinely a values screen, not a trick question. they've had bad experiences with people joining who weren't actually okay with it.

corp_refugee

yeah they explicitly tell you this in the recruiter call if you pay attention. they lost a bunch of engineers in 2019-2020 over government contracts and they tightened up the values screen after. if you're on the fence about the work, better to figure that out before the loop, not after.

ml_mike

anomaly detection alerting system is a classic Palantir system design prompt. they have real products in exactly that space so it's not abstract to them. brush up on time series storage, sketching vs exact counting, and when you'd use Kafka vs a simpler queue.

visa_vik

did they ask about visa sponsorship status at any point? i'm on H1B and trying to figure out if it's worth applying. any intel appreciated.

remote_swe_42

recruiter asked early in the first call, i believe they do sponsor but it came up as a standard question. i'd just ask directly in the first recruiter screen, they seem fine with it.