I applied through a recruiter. The process took 2 months. I interviewed at Twilio (San Diego, CA) in Apr 2022
Interview
I was contacted by a recruiter on LinkedIn about an opening and responded. We set up the typical phone screen and he told me more about the position and then set up an online technical assessment. I completed the assessment and was then ghosted for 3 weeks. I tried following up a day or two later via email and then later via text (recruiter gave me his cell and said to text him with any questions) but didn't hear anything back.
There were four questions on the technical assessment. I misread the instructions on one of them and burned some time before getting back on track. I ended up with an 80-something, so I just assumed by the lack of response that I simply didn't get a high enough score.
3 weeks later I got a response saying that the position I was applying for was no longer available and was asked if I was interested in a different, similar role. I wasn't really given any information about the first role outside of a generic backend engineering description so it really didn't make much of a difference to me and I said that was fine. I was then scheduled for a technical screen a few weeks out. I aced the technical screen and received very positive feedback, but then was told that the second position I was applying for was no longer available.
I was then referred to a different recruiter who was looking to fill a variety of different, similar positions. He let me know that he passed my profile to a group of hiring managers and gave me an unofficial date for an onsite interview. As the date approached, I didn't hear anything, then eventually was told (after emailing the recruiter two days away from the onsite date I was given) that none of the managers responded and I'd have to keep waiting. That was a week and a half ago.
This process started on March 16 and it's now May 21. I've completed two recruiter screens, an online technical assessment, and a live technical assessment in that time and still don't seem to be any closer to getting an offer. In this timeframe I've interviewed at several other companies and have just accepted another position.
I would not recommend interviewing here unless you have several months to burn and this is the only opportunity you're interested in. Twilio seems like a great company to work for but they clearly have some major recruiting issues.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
LeetCode medium - solve problem and give time complexity, alternative solutions / tradeoffs, etc.
Three-stage process: recruiter screening, a test task and on-site interview. Both test task and the on-site were simple and straightforward, with focus on practical skills. On-site included the prospective team lead, VP and a team lead from another team in the same location.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
- What data structure would you use for variable-length phone number prefixes?
I applied online. I interviewed at Twilio in Jan 2025
Interview
Interviewed for the L2 role on the Channels team. I did the online assessment (~3 hours), passed it, then was notified saying they filled the role and were no longer considering me. No referral to another role either. Long story short, don't let this awful company waste your time.
2 algo problems (listed below), 1 easy SQL problem, 1 easy API data retrieval problem, and 2 trivial multiple choice problems.
Interview questions [2]
Question 1
Similar to LC1664 - Ways to Make a Fair Array except you don't need to count the number of ways to make it fair, you just have to find the 1 index to remove to make it fair.
If you google Hackerrank Approximate Matching you can find some material on it. Involves calculating a text score for substrings of a word based on a given prefix and suffix.
I applied online. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Twilio (Madrid) in Sep 2023
Interview
I applied on the website (redirected from LinkedIn) and after a few days I was contacted by the recruitment team and an initial short call was arranged. After this call, I was given a HackerRank test to complete, which consisted of 3 multiple choice questions and 2 coding exercises. My technical assessment was reviewed and I was told that I was approved and the next interviews were scheduled. I then had 3 interviews together (but on different days with different interviewers): Coding, System Design and Behavioural. Note that one interview doesn't eliminate you from the process, but a final result is expected as a combination of all the interviews. A few days after the interviews, I had another call with the recruitment team to get the final feedback, and in my case, unfortunately, the recruiter told me that they wouldn't be proceeding with an offer for me. I would just like to add that everyone was very friendly throughout the process.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
System design: "Design a photo upload/album printing application"