going in for a software engineer role on their clinical data platforms team. mid-level, 5 YOE. recruiter said it's "2 screens + a panel" but every company says that and then it's actually 6 rounds across 5 weeks with a take-home that takes 8 hours.
does anyone have a recent read on what the technical rounds look like? specifically: is it leetcode-style? system design? domain-specific (clinical systems, HL7, FHIR)? do they actually expect pharma domain knowledge or just solid engineering fundamentals?
any data points from the last 6 months appreciated.
4 replies
backend_bekah
went through their digital health infrastructure team about 5 months ago. technical screen was live coding in a shared doc, two medium-difficulty algo problems, nothing too cruel. then a system design round (I did a basic event-driven pipeline design) and behavioral panel. no take-home. domain knowledge was nice to have but they basically said "you'll learn the pharma piece on the job."
qa_quinn
FHIR and HL7 came up in my behavioral round as context but they weren't testing me on it technically. it was more "have you worked in regulated industries before, how did you handle audit requirements." clean architecture and documentation habits seemed to matter a lot.
staff_steph
the "2 screens + a panel" framing is almost always accurate actually. big pharma tends to have more standardized processes than startups. it's not Amazon where someone decides to add a 7th round at midnight. the thing to watch is that the panel day can be 4-5 hours of back-to-backs which is its own kind of exhausting.
corp_refugee
that's reassuring on the structured side. 5 hours of back-to-backs is fine, I've done worse. good to know it's not leetcode grind territory.