YOE : 3 years as backend developer

I applied to Elastic from linkedin.

Recruiter reached out to me, and had a half and hour discussion to understand my roles and responsibilities and also it was like a screening round and gave an in depth idea about the role he is hiring for.

After 3 weeks, recruiter reached out saying I am shortlisted and they want to conduct the interviews.

1st round - Hiring Manager round where HM determines the cultural fitness first.
Lots of behavioural questions and a deep dive into all the answers that I had given

Got a reply after 3-4 days, that I have cleared the first round.

Then I got one assignment, on codesignal and was given 5 days to complete it. Once you start the assignment
I was given 24 hours to finish it.
Recruiter had asked me specifically to not submit my code immediately even if all tests are passing
He told the hidden tests are there, and they might not pass.
Question was relatively very easy. It was a big problem statement, and required me to almost make a whole application except db connection.
Tip : Should follow all the best practices here like SOLID principles.

It was not a very difficult problem statement. Just an elaborate one.

I worked on it for 7-8 hours. I was able to get the output in first 4-5 hours and rest of the time went in fine tuning the code.

I also covered all the edge cases, even the ones not mentioned, because while testing the code I got those in my mind

After submitting the test, I reached out to the recruiter after 2-3 days and he told i have received a perfect 300 score but my code was under review and it will take one more day.
I got shortlisted for the next 2 technical rounds.

3rd round was with the principal engineer with whom I had to work, and he did a deep dive into the code I submitted
I was not expecting that, and was not prepared with it, but he wanted to understand why I have used certain things
So, he was looking for what could be better according to me. Asked about SOLID principles
He was very thorough. He asked me about time complexity of each part of my code, and I also made a mistake which
he made me only notice and rectify. This discussion went for 45 minutes.
After that I told him about my project, and he asked me some questions in depth around it.
Then he opened it for me to ask him questions

4th round - It was with the Tech Lead/Architect of the whole org and he was also asking about my current role
He asked me questions on my project, some in depth ones and asked me lots of questions on software development skills.
They felt like easy questions, but if you have not worked on something, you would not be able to answer that
And they are pretty smart to catch on to it. This did not feel like an interview instead was more like a discussion
Interviewer was pretty good.

At the end, I got rejected because the role they were hiring for, required someone with more technical expertise.
I cleared all the rounds, but somehow i couldn't fit into their expectations.Recruiter assured me that once a role corresponding to my experience opens up,
he will consider me without me having to go through this whole loop again.

Elastic has great work culture and you can feel it by talking to the interviewers. Everyone was very down to earth.
It was such a refreshing experience because it was not at all based on leetcode, instead it was based on my technical expertise.
Also, it was a global team. So one round was with someone in USA, one with someone in Europe and one was with someone in India.