Wanted to share my experience interviewing for a Software Engineer role at Samsara. Sadly I didnt get the role in the end but I performed the best I could and I wanted to share my experience for any other future candidates.

First interview was a phone screen similar to other companies in which you discuss the role and a few general questions about yourself and your suitability. Not too much guidance for this one as you will have done many like it.

The second round was a technical phone screen lasting an hour. You have a quick introduction to your interviewer and then you are taken to a coderpad environment where you will be asked to code a solution to a problem while they spectate you and sometimes offer some guidance. I was given a large string with different punctuation in like line breaks, paragraphs and symbols and was asked to parse this string to insert HTML tags at punctuation points, like < br > tags and < strong > tags. This did catch me off guard and I didnt end up finishing it but I think they liked the way I commentated my work and I was also very forthcoming in the bit afterwards where they ask a few questions about your solution and what you would change. I said how my solution wasnt exactly the best and obviously that was alright because I proceeded to the next round.

The next round was a gruelling gauntlet of 3 hour-long interviews; another coding interview, a system design interview and a standard behavioural interview. The coding interview was actually alright; I was given a briefing which sounded fairly complicated at the time about making a service which parses command line arguments into a usable format but once they finished explaining it wasnt too bad at all. I was asked in what form I would return the parsed arguments so as to use them the easiest and then to code a solution to meet 3 criteria. It really wasnt that bad, it was just more string parsing and formatting but there was some onus on me to make decisions about how I would go about designing it. I think if you brush up on string manipulation you'll handle it.

The system design interview I was asked to design a service where users can upload csv files of card payments for refueling vehicles across a fleet and to compile in a big list and enable the user to track where payments are being made and if any fraudulent payments are made. Not too much to say about this as this was definitely my weakest area so I'll just say good luck because this interview was stupid to say the least. The main thing you'll have to contend with is your interviewer disagreeing with everything that comes out of your mouth and even if you do change your mind in line with their advice they will somehow disagree with you again. Painful experience and utterly pointless.

Behavioural interview will be 70% going really in-depth about a previous project of yours. Be prepared to talk about the planning, the execution, some things that went well and some things you'd change. They really do dig deep and get you to explain it all. Next part was times when you worked really well with someone and times when you had to resolve a conflict so thats fairly standard.

Overall the interview experience is good apart from the system design which I feel is like that everywhere.