I recently had an interview experience with KLA, a Chennai-based organization, for the position of Engineer-2 (AI/ML Engineer). As I already have more than three years of experience in the field, the Engineer-2 position seemed like a perfect fit for me.

The process began when the HR from KLA contacted me through a Naukri invite. After I applied for the job, they called and asked me to share my updated resume so they could forward it to the technical team. Three days later, I received another call — my profile was shortlisted, and they wanted to schedule my first round of interviews.

One of the best parts about the KLA interview process is that they schedule interviews after 8 PM, which means I didn’t have to take leave from my current organization. We decided to have the interview on Monday, giving me the weekend to revise my concepts.

Round 1 — Technical Discussion
The first round began with an introduction about myself and my projects. After that, the interviewer asked a few Machine Learning fundamentals and project-based questions. The discussion went smoothly, and the interviewer seemed quite satisfied with my responses.

Round 2 — Deep Dive into ML/DL
The next day, HR informed me that I had cleared the first round and wanted to schedule the second one. I chose Thursday for it. This round started at 8:30 PM, and it was a bit more intense — they went deeper into Machine Learning and Deep Learning concepts. I managed to answer most of the questions confidently, and overall, the round went well.

Round 3 — Global Panel Interview
The following Monday, HR reached out again, saying I had cleared the second round and now had to appear for a third one. This time, the interviewer was from the USA team. The session lasted around an hour — the first half focused on my projects and ML/DL knowledge, while the second half involved problem-solving and scenario-based questions related to KLA’s domain. They also asked an interesting question:

“Why do you want to shift from Computer Vision to GenAI?”

I explained my motivation, linking it to my curiosity about generative models and their real-world applications.

Although the round went well from my perspective, four days later, HR informed me that I didn’t make it to the final selection.

Even though I didn’t clear the last round, I genuinely appreciated the transparency and professionalism in the entire process. The questions were insightful, the interviewers were knowledgeable, and overall, it was a great learning experience with one of the leading global tech companies.