remote_swe_42 · 5 replies
interviewing at Snowflake in 4 weeks for a Staff SWE role. want to build a better picture of what the current loop looks like.
if you've been through it in the last 6 months, drop: role/level, how many rounds, what types (coding, design, behavioral), how long to offer, and whether the loop felt calibrated to the level.
bonus points if you can say how many behavioral rounds and whether they're all STAR-explicit or more conversational.
appreciate it, will share my notes after my loop too.
Senior SWE, not Staff. 5 rounds: recruiter, coding screen, 2 coding onsite, 1 system design, 1 behavioral. behavioral was with an eng manager not a peer which felt more high-stakes. very STAR-explicit. interviewer literally said "walk me through a specific situation" when I started too broadly. to offer was 11 days.
ML engineer role (applied ML, not research). similar round count but one round was a ML system design: design a fraud detection system for a financial SaaS customer. very applied, no theory questions at all. they wanted to hear me talk about data pipelines and latency tradeoffs more than model architectures. seemed aligned with what Snowflake actually sells.
not at Staff level but mid-level SWE: 4 rounds after the screen, 2 coding, 1 design, 1 behavioral. behavioral was 45 min which felt long. I ran out of fresh examples by question 4. prepare more stories than you think you need, they dig.
good callout on the story depth. how many behavioral questions total across the round? trying to figure out how many prep stories to have ready.
i counted 6 distinct situations they asked for. some were follow-ups on the same story but they pushed for different scenarios most of the time. i'd have 8-10 strong stories ready minimum.