I applied through an employee referral. I interviewed at Blue Origin
Interview
Got call from recruiter after referral for unlisted position. Short chat with recruiter to see if I was okay moving to Seattle and liked BO and why I wanted to leave current position. Led to phone interview with an engineer. They mostly asked what I wanted to do and to describe experiences on my resume. Engineer did not seem familiar with my field and reported that I should figure out what I want to work on and try again in a year when they have more money, despite me describing a niche that covers a dozen or so jobs in the US.
I applied online. I interviewed at Blue Origin (Kent, WA)
Interview
They spent an hour with everyone in the room listening in as I presented my career. Then I went from one interviewer to another and each spent an hour quizzing me on technical subjects. After 4 hours it felt more like an SAT test than an interview as I was rushed from one person to the next. It was then that I realized that nobody had asked if I had any questions or even said a word about the position. Was it stress or design? Ground support or flight? Florida or Washington? They supposedly dont have "formal titles" so it seemed like everyone just kinda goes around and does whatever. When the recruiter found out I wasn't interested in Washington State, we parted ways. It was definitely for the best, because it was obvious that the company is pretty far behind the bell curve. I wasn't impressed with any of the interviewers, and the hiring manager had only been with the company for 2 months. Their attitude is clearly "You're here to try and prove yourself to us" rather than a 2 way conversation to see if both the individual is a good fit for the company and the company is a good fit for the individual.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Sketch the shear and moment diagrams for a pinned, pinned beam with a distributed load, draw a typical stress strain curve and label the parameters, draw bearing bypass loads on a composite plate, draw a freebody diagram of a fastener holding two plates together and discuss what you would check, what is top down design, how would you design this fin, etc...too many more to list.
I applied through a recruiter. I interviewed at Blue Origin (Kent, WA) in Apr 2017
Interview
Very similar to the SpqceX interview process: technical phone screen with a recruiter, a couple technical phone interviews, and finally an on campus final presentation and interview. The final interview consistents of a presentation and then back to back 1:1 interviews with all attendees.