Interview Experiences

Real candidates, real loops: every round, what was asked, and how it ended.

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9 stories

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Palo Alto NetworksSoftware Engineer
Reported Jul 2026

Palo Alto Networks Software Engineer interview experience: missed interview follow-up

The technical content was not what defined this process for me. Recruiter contact started well, then communication stopped. My emails and phone outreach went unanswered, and even an interview that had been scheduled did not happen as expected. There was a no-show situation where I was left waiting without follow-up. That missed interview felt secondary to the larger problem: I never received any…

No response0
Palo Alto NetworksSoftware Engineer
Reported Jul 2026

Palo Alto Networks Software Engineer interview: project decisions and AI

After applying, I had a recruiter phone screen about my experience and the technologies I had used. Soon afterward, the technical discussion focused on how I had built real projects: one project in depth, the design decisions I made, and the trade-offs behind them. That conversation also included how I had considered adopting AI in my current work. Coding-related exchanges were woven into the pro…

HR Screen0
Palo Alto NetworksSoftware Engineer
Reported Jul 2026

Software Engineer interview at Palo Alto Networks: interview experience

I started with an online assessment and then had three virtual technical rounds. The first was a system-design-and-coding-style prompt where I implemented a solution. It soon turned into debugging existing code to fix a bug, with the focus on making the code work under constraints rather than on theory. In the final round, I had to modify the code again in an object-oriented way, changing both it…

Online Assessment0
Palo Alto NetworksAccount Executive
Reported Jul 2026

Account Executive interview at Palo Alto Networks: cut-off Zoom call

What began as a normal Zoom interview stopped abruptly after about forty minutes. I tried to reconnect and followed up repeatedly, but heard nothing for roughly a week. When someone finally responded, it was simply to say they were no longer considering candidates. The early cutoff and lack of closure left me confused about whether the interview had ended properly on their side or whether I was s…

0
Palo Alto NetworksSoftware Engineer
Reported Jun 2026

Palo Alto Networks Software Engineer interview: three-hour mixed evaluation

I began with an online HackerRank completed on my own. Next came behavioral questions on HireVue, without video recording. A recruiter call followed with the usual request to walk through myself and similar basics, meant to confirm fit and direction before the deeper stages. The next step was the largest one. The recruiter said it would take around three hours, and that was how it played out: rou…

Online Assessment0
Palo Alto NetworksSoftware Engineer
Feb 2026

Five Onsite Rounds, Rejected via Candidate Portal

I interviewed with them at the end of last month. First I talked with the HM, and a week later I went onsite at the company. There were five rounds total, 45 minutes each. Every round started with questions about past projects, then a lot of content around k8s, networking, and cloud. Coding included typical LeetCode-style problems, plus one simple BFS. Design included a scheduler and metrics moni…

RejectedOnsite0
Palo Alto NetworksSoftware Engineer
Jan 2026

Sloppy Scheduling, No Lunch, and a Surprisingly Easy Onsite

First, let me vent about the interview experience here — it was very unprofessional. From start to finish I never received a single HR email; it was always unscheduled phone calls, and I never got any prep doc either. Contact was basically one-way. After the HR call in January, almost a month went by with no movement, and I figured it was dead. Then suddenly they reached out to schedule the hirin…

Onsite0
Palo Alto NetworksSoftware Engineer
Sep 2025

Architecture Walkthrough Then Build on Top of It

Interview process Introduced ourselves to each other Asked about resume details A simple algorithm warm-up question System design based on the team's existing architecture Q&A for the interviewer Algorithm question: 226. Invert Binary Tree Wrote it on the whiteboard and did a dry run. System design This team is similar to an ML Infra team — the ML team provides a bunch of models, wraps them into…

Onsite0
Palo Alto NetworksSoftware Engineer
Sep 2025

An Algorithm Question That Turned Into System Design

Interview Process Introduced ourselves to each other Asked about resume details (the interviewer was pretty funny — he saw on my resume that I mentioned how much revenue my project had contributed, and he actually asked whether the company had actually paid me that money) Algorithm question / system design Questions for the interviewer Algorithm Question / System Design This part was interesting.…

Onsite0

What are interview experiences?

An interview experience is a candidate's own account of a hiring loop — not a question bank entry. It tells you the shape of the process: how many rounds there were, what each round actually tested, how long the gaps between them ran, and what the recruiter said at the end. That context is the part a question list cannot give you.

How to read them

Weight recent write-ups more heavily — interview loops change, often within a year. Read several for the same company and role rather than one: a single account tells you what one interviewer asked, while five tell you what the bar is. Note the outcome badge too, since a rejection write-up usually explains the gap far more precisely than an offer one.

Share your own

Every published experience earns 50 XP, and each of the first 3 likes it receives in a day earns you 10 XP more. Likes must come from established accounts; like-for-like swaps and likes from your own second account are not paid. Write it while the details are fresh — the round order, the exact prompts, and how much time you were given are what the next reader needs.

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