About this guide
 
Get Hired
Inside Scoop
  • They are known for establishing an 'engineering culture'
  • There are some complaints of overwork and lack of work-life balance
  • Great opportunity to work with interesting technology and challenge yourself intellectually (especially if you are interested in surveillance)
  • Room for professional development and growth and good perks/benefits
  • Compensation is high
 
Interview
Interview Process

It takes 2 weeks on average to finish the entire process, however, in certain cases it could take longer.

Stage 1: Phone screen with HR (might be skipped)
Stage 2: Coding challenge
The candidate has 5 days to begin the quiz, but once it's started it has to be completed in 90 minutes. Questions are mainly on algorithms.
Stage 3: Technical phone screen with an engineer, with live coding challenge
Stage 4: Onsite interview
The onsite interview usually involves a very brief meeting with the CEO, followed by a series of 30 minute interviews lasting essentially all day. The questions are described as moderately difficult (coding is done in Java) and the interview sessions are quite intense. However, the atmosphere is described as friendly and welcoming.

The information about the interview process for a data scientist at Palantir is limited.

Stage 1: Phone screen with HR (might be skipped)
Stage 2: Technical phone interview with hiring manager, includes coding questions
Stage 3: Data modeling take-home challenge
Stage 4: Onsite (full day)

The interview process takes 4-6 weeks on average.

Stage 1: Phone screen with HR (might be skipped)
Stage 2: Phone interview to review portfolio with a senior designer/team member.
Stage 3: Online design exercise followed by a 1:1 review/pitch with another team member. The design challenge consists of 3 prompts from which the candidate chooses 1.
Stage 4: Onsite interview
The onsite starts with a portfolio presentation, then 2 whiteboard challenges. After lunch, there is a demo on product and design work plus a meeting with the CEO.

 
Interview
Interview Questions
  • Explain the significance of 2^32.
  • Give 3 distinct algorithms to find the K largest values in a list of N items.
  • Find the minimum element in a sorted rotated array in less than O(n)
  • Design and implement a backend for an abstract problem.
  • Write a function given an array of integers. It should return true if any value appears at least twice in the array, and it should return false if every element is distinct. The solution should be O(n).
  • Remove duplicates in an unsorted array where the duplicates are at a distance of k or less from each other.
  • You have a set of (time, value) pairs. How can you find the first and last values in the time interval [a, b]?
  • Print a binary tree using breadth first search, i.e. print all numbers level by level on a tree. Add a line break between each level.
  • If there are 2 lists, and each have an identical number in them except for 1 unique number, how do you find the unique number?
  • If you have a large array of integers, write an algorithm that will find out if any 2 sum to zero. What is the Big O of the algorithm? Come up with ways that are not brute force that are faster.
  • Given another array of prices. Find the maximum single profit for any long transaction (not short).
  • How do you get phone numbers from many files in a directory?
  • SQL understanding: 'What is foreign key?' and 'Write a query to get some numbers in a table.'
  • How would you find the shortest path between 2 nodes in a graph? Write a code in Java to do this.
  • What does synchronized mean in Java? How can you avoid deadlocks?
  • Given an array of integers, how would you find pairs that equal 7?
  • How do you remove duplicates in an array?
  • Sort a list of numbers in which each number is at a distance k from its actual position.
  • You are given a pyramid; for example the number is 2 on the first level, 3 -1 on the second level, 4 7 8 on the third, etc. How do you calculate the maximum subsequence of any path traversing the pyramid?
  • Write a function in C that flips an array of doubles.
  • How do you write a function that determines the intersection (identical elements) of 2 arrays?
  • Do a binary tree traversal with constant memory (no stacks).
  • Implement Sudoko.
  • How would you form the intersection of 2 lists that are unsorted? What is the complexity?
  • For an array of integers, give an algorithm to determine if there are 3 elements that sum to zero. What are the time and space complexities? Generalize to the case where the sum of k elements is 0.
  • How do you find if the sum of 2 numbers is equal to a certain number in an array. Then sum of 3, 4 and N numbers.
  • In an array, how do you find if the sum of n numbers is equal to a certain number?
  • Knowledge of the Bayes rule.
  • Programming question involving sorting
  • What is minimum number of guesses needed to find a number between 1 and 1,000 (when with each guess you're told if the target is higher or lower)?
  • What is the significance of 32^2?
  • What is a stack?
  • What is the optimal performance to expect from a hashing algorithm with no collisions?
  • Describe how, given 2 lists of random numbers, you would find a list of duplicates in the most efficient manner.
  • Can you tell me about your design process?
  • Design an experience for the recruitment process.
  • Design a mobile app for splitting the bill among friends in the restaurant.
  • Generate ideas for e-ink reader display use cases.
  • Data structures (high level)
  • Customer interaction
  • Product roadmap discussion
 
Culture
About Palantir

Mission

Our mission is to help our users, the people doing the hard work on complex, real-world problems. We do this by writing software that enables effective analysis against complicated, data-driven problems.

 
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Locations
Office Locations
  • Palo Alto: 100 Hamilton Ave
  • Wellington:
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  • Groton: 558 Eastern Point Rd
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Photos
Office Photos