I applied online. The process took 6 weeks. I interviewed at Blue Origin (Kent, WA) in Oct 2017
Interview
It was a lengthy and in-depth process: phone screen, in person tour of the facility and screening/intro meeting with the VP of HR, then a 4 hour presentation/one-on-one interview scenario. I was very impressed with the process, just perhaps not the team members selected to be involved in the panel.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
describe a project you led through completion, certifications, most complex employee relations scenario. Others, more technically HR related.
I applied online. The process took 1 week. I interviewed at Blue Origin in Oct 2017
Interview
Submitted online application, got a call from HR after a week, and set up phone interview with an engineer for two days later. I rushed this for reason I mention below. Interview itself took an hour or a little little, was scheduled for 75min, with access to computer for code sharing platform.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Interview started out with me getting to ask questions about company first. He wanted to make sure I got to ask what I wanted to know and we wouldn't run out of time at end. Very considerate.
A couple soft skill questions. A couple trivia questions about space exploration. "Do you happen to know how many people have been on the moon?" "What was the most significant space related event for you in the last few weeks or months?"
Technical question related to real-time systems, semaphores, what's a mutex.
Then some coding questions. None of the "CS121 Datastructures and Algorithms" you get with some other companies. We used an online code sharing platform.
Interviewer asked to find out if a given number is a palindrome, i.e. 12321 is, 1234 isn't, and you can't just convert number to a string. Worked out an algorithm, but got a little stuck under pressure on how to code it, iterative or recursive. Interviewer said he hated those coding exercises, too. Did another coding question which checked for off-by-one errors. Apparently I got it right first time, but then wrong after he asked "Are you sure?". Not so thrilled about that.
They didn't go for the next interview step. Maybe it was the coding stumble, maybe it was because I didn't know how many people had been on the moon, maybe it was, because I put them under time pressure. I had another company with an offer waiting in the wings, and I didn't want to decline that firm offer just for the chance for another interview with BO, or start that job, and then 2 weeks later end up getting an offer from BO.
I applied online. I interviewed at Blue Origin (Kent, WA) in Sep 2017
Interview
I have to say the people are fantastic. Every one of them was personable and super sharp. The interview process was like waking up after a long sleep in roles that limit engineers to small scopes of responsibility. It was refreshing to see a place that requires both design and analysis.
It started off with a phone screening with a recruiter, followed by an on-site. The first on-site was a one on one chat with the hiring manager, who asked work history and discipline-specific questions peppered with technical questions. My brief interaction was a positive one. Once I got word that I would be moving forward in the process; I was set up with a full interview loop.
The full loop included a presentation to those who would later be interviewing me one on one regarding my work history, followed by some Q&A. After the group presentation; I sat down with each person and we discussed relevant technical knowledge. I'm going to say it really showed me how much the silo I work in now has degraded my memory of some basic equations. You can bet I went back and brushed up after the interview on everything I didn't remember. Included in the questions were problems to solve that gauged my knowledge and (I believe) my approach to problem solving. Everything from free body diagrams, to beam loading, to schematics and material properties.
I'm going to call it difficult, because relative to every other interview I've had for an engineering role; this one was the hardest. If you haven't lost your knowledge material properties and equations to the sands of time; it should help a lot. It comes back quickly, but if you're home when it does; that won't help you.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
What were some of the critical design details about a project you worked on?