just finished the Vercel interview process and landed an offer, so figured I'd write this up while it's fresh.
Round structure: recruiter call, 30 min. pretty standard, they want to know why Vercel specifically. async take-home: build a small app using Next.js, had a week to finish. they were explicit that you could use the docs and references. it wasn't a gotcha, it was closer to a real task. live technical review of the take-home. two engineers, they go through your choices and ask "why did you structure it this way" a lot. they want your reasoning, not just working code. systems + craft interview. mostly about performance, caching strategies, edge functions, that sort of thing. felt like talking to engineers who actually care about this stuff, not people running through a checklist. bar-raiser type round with a senior eng. more about how you think through tradeoffs and collaborate with design/product.
couple of things that surprised me: they really do care about whether you understand the developer as a user. one question was basically "describe a time you made something faster for developers who use your code." also the take-home was genuinely enjoyable, which is not something I say often.
timeline was about 3.5 weeks start to offer. headcount seemed tight so they were deliberate about it.