wrapped my Zoom onsite about three weeks ago for a senior infrastructure / platform role. it was fully virtual, which is now just the default there. five rounds back to back with breaks. here's the breakdown.
round 1: hiring manager. 45 min. more conversational than I expected. mostly about background, what motivates me, and how I approach large ambiguous projects. no technical questions in this round at all. the HM wanted to understand how I think about prioritization and stakeholder communication.
round 2: coding. 45 min on Coderpad. one medium, one shorter follow-up. I got a classic interval merging problem, then a follow-up asking me to handle streaming input. the streaming angle is interesting for infra roles, keep that in mind.
round 3: system design. 60 min. mine was distributed config management at scale. I led with service discovery and fallback caching. they pushed on consistency requirements and what happens when the config store is partitioned.
rounds 4 and 5: behavioral. two separate interviewers, 45 min each. questions mapped to their values (care, deliver, integrity, etc). saw overlap in themes but not exact repeats. STAR format, they pushed on specifics in every story.
total time: about 4.5 hours including breaks. exhausting. I had a tea and granola bar between rounds 3 and 4 and that was the best decision I made all day.
debrief turnaround: I heard back in about 8 business days. felt long but apparently that's typical for them. the recruiter gave me a heads up it would take that long, which I appreciated.
outcome: offer. L5. still in negotiation. will post numbers when it closes.