I applied through a recruiter. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Spotify (Cambridge, MA) in Jun 2019
Interview
Got recruited via linked in after applying on their website.Had a phone call with recruiter and then video call with hiring manager. After I was asked to do a video interview with their researcher focusing on ML fundamentals. Interviewer came on the call 5 minutes late, didn't apologize about showing up late. Starts off asking me how I would create a parse tree, to which I replied I don't know the specifics of a parse tree beyond vaguely recalling what it is and he buried his head in his hands and let out an audible sigh. Then asked me what is a way to check distribution comparisons of language models with information theory. Afterwards asked me to create a podcast search, even though I have no information retrieval experience in my resume and it wasn't related to role I was interviewing for. He ignored my clarifying questions without responding and gave contradictions and was rude throughout.After this interview I didn't hear back from the recruiter, even after a followup two weeks later. Extremely disappointed in the time I wasted talking with the team and the lack of professionalism.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
How to compare language models using information theory, create parse tree, design podcast search with only transcript (later contradicted himself and said why I didn't use any metadata features when he told me I cannot).
I applied online. The process took 2 months. I interviewed at Spotify (London, England) in Apr 2025
Interview
Interview with recruiter on experience and salary expectations, following that interview got my intended level reduced from Senior to MLE2, final round of 5 interviews, everything except for values were case studies (case study on designing recommendation system, predicting number of active users, etc), very few questions on ml theory, one question on sql
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
1) Design backend around ML Recommendation model
2) Build data pipeline on sorting for a most popular artists per country
3) Predict number of monthly active users
4) Build a recommendation system of 1 song per user
I got contacted with a recruiter and had a call with him.
It was a pleasant conversation. The recruiter was friendly and very clear at communication. The information was transparent. I didn't continue to the next interview because I decided not to relocate.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
My experiences in machine learning model deployment, integration and expected salary range.
I applied online. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Spotify (New York, NY) in Dec 2024
Interview
The interview process was a good process connected with the recruiter who asked some standard behavioral questions and technical for 30 minutes. I was then scheduled with a technical interview.
