DigitalOcean Senior Software Engineer II interview questions

The interview process went smoothly. It started with an initial interview with the HR team, which lasted about 10 minutes. Then I had a casual chat with the hiring manager where we discussed my previous experience and job expectations. After that, I scheduled my technical interviews. The first technical interview involved hands-on debugging, where I had to SSH into a machine and ensure everything was running smoothly. The interviewer was relaxed, and we worked together to debug the issue. I was allowed to use the internet, but it was a straightforward task and I didn't need it. The next technical interview was about system design, and it was also laid-back. We discussed how I would design a caching system. However, I didn't perform well in the design interview. Last interview was again with one of the Hiring manager who was leading a team and the team was all based in US and i was the only one from Pakistan. Later, I talked to the recruiter about the job offer, but I ended up rejecting it because the salary offered by the company was significantly lower (4-5 times) than what my peers in the US were getting, simply because I was working from Pakistan. I raised this concern with the recruiter, and I also mentioned that the offered salary in local PKR was not competitive compared to other entities operating in Islamabad, Pakistan. Moreover, the company was not willing to pay me in dollars, which ultimately led to my decision to reject the offer.

After applying online via a form, I was contacted a week later by the department director. After a half-hour chat about the business, we scheduled a tech screen. That screen was a detailed technical discussion with an engineer. I then scheduled another half-hour informal chat with the director during which I asked him some questions. We agreed to proceed on to next steps, which was an interview slate. The slate consisted of four in-depth conversations about my background, distributed systems, systems architecture, production troubleshooting, and teamwork. The next day I had an introductory call with a recruiter. The following day, I spoke with the team manager (under the director) and the recruiter again. I got a verbal "yes" and I had an offer letter on the following business day.