I applied through a recruiter. I interviewed at xAI in Apr 2026
Interview
I was shortlisted by the xAI Recruiting Team based on my GitHub profile and my open-source work and was subsequently approached on LinkedIn regarding this opportunity. The team then coordinated with me to schedule an interview.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
The interview started with a brief self-introduction, followed by several questions based on my open-source contributions and GitHub projects.
The interviewer then discussed system design scenarios, asking how I would scale a backend system to handle 10,000+ users, what potential failure points could arise from features I had implemented, and what alternative approaches I had considered while designing backend solutions.
The discussion then moved to frontend development, particularly React. I was asked about React Hooks, when to use specific hooks, and practical use cases for hooks such as `useState`, `useEffect`, and `useMemo`. Additional topics included event-driven architecture and JWT-based authentication.
Finally, I was given a JavaScript coding problem related to the event loop, focusing on microtasks and macrotasks. I was asked to determine the order in which different statements would be executed and printed. This was the only question that I was unable to solve completely during the interview.
Ended up not getting selected!
Initially, a phone screen, then a system design, afterwards a standard LeetCode style interview, then an ML interview for an ML-related roles, and then lastly an exec interview which would be in person. The interviews are subject to the role, but the format should be similar to what I’ve just laid out.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
They asked me the Text Editor LeetCode question with Undo/Redo
The technical round hit hard with a question to implement multi-head self-attention from scratch in PyTorch. I felt the pressure as I explained the time and memory complexity, but the real surprise came when I recalled a similar problem I had practiced on PracHub just days before. Following that, I had a casual chat about the role and my experience, and then wrapped up with a behavioral interview. Once everything was done, I received an offer, which I gladly accepted. Overall, a challenging yet rewarding experience.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Implement multi-head self-attention from scratch in PyTorch and explain the time/memory complexity, then describe how FlashAttention reduces memory usage