They were looking for a Principal infrastructure software engineer who can lead a team of few engineers for APAC region to design and automation their upcoming solutions on VMware and AWS platform. The interview process took around 6-7 weeks with multiple no show from interviewer side, re-scheduling. But with whomever I spoke during the interview process were well technical. Multiple HR were engaged during this interview process and overall averagely arranged.
The interview started from the coding challenge to the design, implementation of core infra, managing team etc. Mostly it was an easy interview and 5 rounds were there till end.
The worst part of the interview was, the salary & benefits negotiation. They never asked me the salary & benefits details in the beginning of the interview and directly started the interview but at the end when I shared my salary & benefits to process the offer letter, they found me much higher than their budget and then we dropped the discussion.
Usually its a good practice to ask the candidate about the salary & benefits and understand if you can offer him as per the ask or not. Then only start the interview. Else its a waste of time from both the side.