AppNexus Interview Questions

Easy but fun was a lot of good work. Enjoyed the entire process. Would recommend to a friend or someone else who was interested in applying to the role. It was a combination of written and verbal.

1 call with hiring manager 4 interviews in the morning: 1 fit interview with lead solutions consultant, 1 technical interview with solutions consultant, 1 interview with hiring manager, 1 interview with sales director.

Solid. Thorough. Great people. Recruiters were thorough and helpful throughout the process. Think other people interviewed on the same day i did too which added pressure but seemed efficient. Thanks for listening to my review - is this 30 words yet?

Multiple interviews with different people. Everyone was very friendly during this process. I have really enjoyed it. No more to say about the interview at AppNexus. Go for it, you'll be fine

This was a few years ago. I applied online and they got back to me. I was asked to complete a design test, that included creating a sketch of a problem they sent and sending a photo back of what I'd completed. It took them so long to respond to my drawing, I ended up getting hired by another company. A friend of mine had the same issue.

I applied online. The process took about 3 weeks. I interviewed at AppNexus (New York, NY) in January 2019. Applied through company web, then I had a video interview one hour.

First round video interview, Onsite Interview at their small office in Montreal. First round video interview is a coding question and few follow-ups. The onsite includes a behavioral, a coding, and a system design (for new grads). People ay their Montreal office are basically all SDEs, and they are very friendly. The university recruiter, who worked for Nexus for more than 3.5 years, was really unprofessional. She arranged a phone call with me right before the final interview, just to ask my nationality. (instead of asking if I'm authorized to work). It's obviously unlawful in the US and Canada.

The process was really long and not very well managed, as 4 hours each hour with different team members and questions were frequently repeated throughout the hours so what was the point of that, they need to prepare together ahead to not make the exact question repeated which will result of the person being interviewed keeps repeating the answers.

Extremely long interview with multiple team members. Each had some sort of activity or set of questions prepared in advance. Challenging and exhausting, but I suppose they were doing their due diligence. The team members seemed very smart.

Pros: fine engineers. Cons: seems like somebody from AppNexus/Xandr/AT&T stole my $200+ hotel reimbursement; also non-compete agreement nonsense in the job offer. I initially applied to a position of a Senior Frontend SWE in Encino, CA, we had a phone call with the hiring manager, she was going to proceed, but then something happened on their side and they temporary stopped hiring in that city. As long as I’m a fullstack lead engineer, then I asked the recruiter to check positions in Portland and we came up with a Senior SWE role on Webservices team in Portland, OR. This is not a super-exciting team for many folks, as the team’s task is quite tedious – they convert old legacy monolith to a set of independent (micro) services. But I’m fine with this job – it has its own challenges, requires lot of collaboration, etc. – so it seemed interesting for me. We had a phone call with the hiring manager. He gave me a homework task to complete at home – just google Gilded Rose kata and you will find it. Then we had a tech screen call with one of their engineers – to discuss the task + answer some technical questions - nothing tricky, mostly quick exam-style, like “what’s HTTP” or “tell me about XSS”. Then they invited me to Portland for an on-site interview. The interview day had a couple of tech sessions and a lunch with the hiring manager. The tech sessions were not focused on algorithms or structures. One session was to check the experience – answering general industry questions like “what’s REST”, “what happens when you type a URL in the browser bar and press Enter”. Also there were soft skill experience-related questions like “did you have experience working under pressure, tell us about that”. Another session was more focused on details - code a simple algorithm on a whiteboard, tell how unit tests should be implemented, how CSRF attacks work, etc. Lunch with the hiring manager was a normal lunch, not an interview round. So it was just a nice talk. The manager also checked whether I’d be interested in a more advanced role of a tech lead for the team - and I was fine with that, as I had already been doing similar stuff at my current company. In a couple of days after the on-site interviews they sent me a job offer for the aforementioned tech lead role. I was interested in it, but unfortunately we didn’t agree on compensation - it was not competitive. The compensation included base pay, annual bonus and one-time relocation/sign-up bonus (which you should decrease by 35% due to taxes, before actually trying to cover your relocation costs). Overall the whole package looked to me much lower than at my current company, considering the benefits that were worse at AppNexus (including more expensive medical insurance), working conditions, and life in Portland. And the total compensation was also lower than the total compensation suggested to me by a different company later. Thus for me it was not financially viable to join AppNexus – would be like a step backward. I guess the major problem is that they don’t provide RSUs and ESPP after acquisition by AT&T, which I think made them fell out of proper compensation level. Another thing I discovered later - when carefully reading the legal language of the job offer - is that it contained a non-compete agreement. Which is just nonsense – literally makes you a slave of the company. Such an agreement is not legal in California, but is still legal in Oregon. It means, that after leaving AppNexus you cannot be hired by any other good software company – because no way it wouldn’t compete with AT&T in one of their numerous markets. So be very aware of that, never sign such stuff. Overall the people were nice, engineers had passion and skills, I liked them. One issue - with people - came much later, when even after numerous reminders I didn’t receive the $200 reimbursement for the hotel (they promised to pay for it before the interviews, and multiple times after). I think somebody in AppNexus/Xandr/AT&T just stole it. I could go to a small-claims court to resolve the issue, but for now decided to not spend time on this matter.