I applied through a recruiter. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Palantir Technologies (Helsinki, Southern Finland) in Jan 2014
Interview
At the end of January 2014, I was contacted by a Palantir recruiter with the question whether I would be interested in the open positions at Palantir. I had no previous knowledge of the company, but the company and their products seemed interesting. We had two phone interviews with her in which she introduced the company and the open positions. The positions would need quite much travelling: 2-3 days a week in the capital area and biweekly in London. There would also be 4-6 week introductory training in Palo Alto.
The other available position was Forward Deployed Software Engineer in Finland. I am an expert on algorithms and data mining/analysis and, thus, the engineering position seemed a little too "basic" coding related to me. I got the impression that Deployment Strategist position would not just be usual sales but include also a lot of technical responsibilities. As I have no experience on business relations I was not sure if this was something for me but I decided to give it a try. In hindsight it seems like the position is actually much more business oriented that I had understood.
In addition to asking about my expertise and background, she asked some questions like
I have a number between 1 and 1000. How many times you have to guess to get the number if I always tell you whether your guess was too large or too small. (Basic binary search, 2^10=1024)
If you have access to all the customer's bank information, what information would you use to suggest Facebook friends for him? (Mutual transactions, region, hobbies, similar job profile, the same work company)
The recruiter made an application for me and I had my first interview at the end of February with one of their Deployment Strategists. Based on the interview reviews here and elsewhere in web, I was prepared for technical questions. He also asked some:
What are the differences in Java and C++?
How would you explain Git to a layman?
What happens technically when you open a web site on a browser?
Have you had difficult situations with partners in work, how did you solve them?
Nevertheless, I had a feeling that the most important question was the first one: I was asked for an elevator pitch type description of the product in my past startup company. Also quite a broad answer to technical questions was ok, so I assume they were actually searching for quite a business oriented person.
My recruiter called me later and told that I might not be suitable for the position. I agree completely.
The interviewers were polite and helpful. Overall, it was an interesting experience. The line on long distant calls was sometimes bad, made understanding difficult. I suggest using Skype instead of a phone call if possible.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Give an elevator pitch type introduction to the product you had in your previous work.