A third-party recruiter contacted me via LinkedIn about this position. The brief technical screening call with the recruiter was followed by a 60-minute "deep dive" panel interview by four members of the infrastructure practice, then a behavioral interview with members of senior leadership. The technical screening and behavioral interviews were both fairly standard rounds of Q&A, but the panel interview was unlike anything I've ever experienced during my career. To start, SADA provided an incorrect/outdated job description to the recruiter, so I was not as prepared going into the interview as I would have preferred. Even after receiving the current job description, the majority of technical questions were unrelated to the stated requirements - it appeared more that SADA was looking for a DevOps engineer with a DBA background than an infrastructure engineer. This was an understandable misunderstanding or oversight that we were able to move on from. That said, the team I interviewed with displayed an alarming lack of care and professionalism. Several team members had an unkempt appearance and made very little effort to conduct the interview from a in a professional setting. Introductions were very awkward and uncomfortable - one interviewer declined to introduce himself and made several unprofessional and outright bizarre comments throughout the call, including something about deuterium toxicity in the state water supply. Although I left the panel interview significantly less interested in joining the SADA team, I continued on to the next. The following behavioral interview with two members of the senior technical leadership was much more comfortable and standard compared to my past experiences. Questions and answers flowed more at a conversational cadence rather than the disjointed rapid-fire questioning during the panel. I received great feedback from the interviewers, was told they would love to have me join the team, and to expect to receive an offer in the coming days. After no word and reaching out to the recruiter for an update a few days later, I was informed that SADA would not be extending an offer with no information as to why, particularly after receiving such positive feedback during the final round. I hope that my experience was an isolated incident, and SADA can use my feedback to improve their interview process in ways that better respect the time and effort that applicants put forth, as well as improve the general image/reputation of the organization.

The interview process began with an initial recruiter call focused on background and role alignment, followed by two to three virtual technical interviews designed to assess problem-solving, technical depth, and communication skills.