Senior/Staff SWE, Inferencing Interview Experience

I treated it like a data structures problem, even though the prompt came with a lot of explanation and visuals. I talked through how to turn a series of stack samples into a trace, got the main solution out, and then hit a harder follow-up that was basically an optimization or constraint change on the same problem. I didn't finish that part, but I kept talking through my approach. The interviewer was friendly and the vibe still felt positive, which ended up being enough to pass.

This one was about finding duplicate files, but the twist was that it wasn't a clean algorithm sandbox. I had to write code that actually interacted with files, and then write a test that created files so I could prove the duplicate detection worked. They were fine with looking up syntax if needed. The base question felt straightforward, and the real signal was in the follow-ups and whether I could operate in a more realistic environment instead of just doing a textbook LeetCode function.

I went in expecting an inferencing optimization discussion because the prompt mentioned GPU clusters and batch inferencing, which is my background. Instead, the interviewer basically treated the model as a black box and wanted a more standard architecture answer, like job scheduling, API shape, queueing, and the rest of the system around it. That threw me off because some of the assumptions didn't feel realistic, and I pushed on that too directly. In hindsight I should have accepted the setup faster and just designed the surrounding system the way he wanted.

I told him Anthropic had already been one of my top places to work, and I came in having done a lot of research on the company. The evidence I pointed to was how consistently leadership talks about the mission, especially the idea of racing to the top on safety instead of just racing to ship first. My read was that they want safety to be a competitive advantage that pushes the rest of the field to behave better too.

I said they position themselves as the more measured, safety-first company, and I do think that's part of the brand. At the same time, my honest take is that they probably regret not being first on some launches, and some of the we-held-it-back-for-safety story may also be post-hoc positioning. So I framed it as a tension: I buy the mission, but I also think they're still a competitive company trying to win.

Present a project of your choice.

I picked a project I'd finished recently and walked through it end to end. It felt like a reverse system design round more than a formal presentation, just me explaining what I built and the decisions behind it to one interviewer.