I applied online. I interviewed at PhysicsX in Jun 2026
Interview
The interview process consists of 6 stages! The initial 30 minutes call with Tom was very good, overall a very good and clear communication with him during the process.
I made it to the second stage - 1 hour coding test on CoderByte. There were 3 tasks, one of which was quite extensive and took most of the time and as a result there was just not enough time to finish it all. Especially if you include time to submit (the submission of the notebook was rendering for a good minute and wasn't succesful the first time so it had to be rendered again) and time to setup and read the instructions, as the time starts to run immediately when you are still on the initial page. If I had 10 more minutes the whole thing could have gone another way.
Very smooth and nice really appreciated the process, the team is here to help. I didn't get until the end of the process although I was really into the company.
I applied online. I interviewed at PhysicsX in Jun 2026
Interview
6 rounds in total, which should have been enough of a red flag for me, but I think what they do sounds super interesting, so applied anyway. I do not understand the need for junior software engineering assesments for senior DS roles. I also didn't appreciate a part of the feedback, which claimed I miss DS fundamentals, which is an insane/arrogant thing to say to someone with a PhD and years of experience. In reality, I wasn't particularly well concentrated during the pair programming interview, because I found it weird to be examined in this way at this stage of my career.
The initial conversation with Tom was nice, he is a very good first point of contact. The technical interview makes sense. The pair programming one and take at home software eng task does not make much sense for a senior or anyone really nowadays.
There were also organisation issues, as the link sent to me for the pair programming interview didn't work, and when they finally sent the correct link, the interviewer seemed annoyed at me? Anyway, company sounds very interesting on paper, but they really need to rethink the interview process. It demonstrates nothing, as it is at the moment. Just wastes time of everyone who doesn't progress after multiple stages.