Engineered Arts Devops Engineer interview questions

I had a very unusual and disappointing interview experience with Engineered Arts. I was initially contacted by an internal recruiter for a DevOps Engineer role — I hadn’t applied; she reached out to me directly. After researching the company, I found the product incredibly interesting and was genuinely excited about the opportunity. In our first conversation, I shared my salary expectations, and she confirmed they were within range. I was then invited to a technical interview with two DevOps engineers. It was a deep technical session, but I felt confident about my performance. A few days later, the recruiter told me the team liked me but that they could only offer about 20% less than my stated salary. Since I was still very interested in the company and product, I said I’d be willing to accept that if compensation was the only issue. She was excited and said they would move me forward to the cultural interview stage. That interview, with the Director of US Operations, was scheduled two weeks later. It went very well, and I left feeling positive. I was told the final interview would be a symbolic one with the COO from the UK, scheduled another 2.5 weeks out. During this long process, I let the recruiter know that I was in final stages with other companies and had offers on the table. I asked how confident I could be in moving forward, and she reassured me that I was nearly at the finish line and everything looked great. Finally, I met with the COO, and again, the conversation seemed to go well. But a week later, the recruiter got back to me saying they had chosen a candidate with stronger technical skills. I was shocked. If my technical skills weren’t a match, why did the process continue for over 6 weeks, with multiple non-technical interviews after the technical round? I had turned down two offers based on what felt like false confidence from the company. In the end, the experience felt disorganized, unprofessional, and disrespectful of a candidate’s time — especially given that they reached out to me in the first place.