Okay so I just finished the PANW coding rounds and survived (barely), writing this up while the adrenaline is still going.
For context: new grad, applying for a junior SWE role on the threat detection platform team. I'd been told by a friend who works there that the coding bar is similar to most mid-tier tech companies, not FAANG-hard. That turned out to be mostly accurate.
Online assessment stage: They sent a HackerRank link first, before the recruiter call even. Two problems, 90 minutes total. Problem 1: a medium-ish graph traversal (connected components variant). Problem 2: a string/regex processing problem that felt more like a medium-hard, at least for me. I used Python, worked fine.
I finished both but my second solution wasn't optimal. Still moved forward, so I think they care more about correctness than pure efficiency at the OA stage.
Live coding rounds (during the onsite): Two rounds of live coding on CoderPad with PANW engineers. Each round is 60 min with the interviewer, probably 40-45 min actual coding after intros and a closing question or two.
Problems I got: Round 1: modified binary search (finding a target in a rotated sorted array variant) Round 2: sliding window on a string, kind of like the longest substring without repeating chars family
Both felt LeetCode medium. Neither was easy. The interviewers were friendly and gave hints when I was stuck, they weren't just watching silently. That helped.
Things that tripped me up: I over-explained my approach before coding on Round 1 and burned maybe 8 minutes. Just start coding earlier, explain as you go.
Language: They accepted Python. I didn't ask about others.
Still waiting on result. Will update.