The 1st interview was with the manager. Discussed several of my past projects. Many of which aligned perfectly with their current projects. So, the manager was excited, and I was optimistic. The tech interview consisted entirely of one, timed, hackerrank session where all my keystrokes were recorded for later analysis. I was supposed to solve some meaningless coding puzzle that made absolutely no sense. And this was supposed to be a research position. I can't remember the details, because the rules were so arbitrary. Something about taking a vector of numeric sub-vectors, finding the max value for every 3rd entry, etc. Then move the vectors around or something -- total nonsense. I asked for an explanation for what problem was to be solved, what skills this was supposed to demonstrate, and the meaning of the rules. I got no help at all from the interviewer. I got the impression that he didn't understand it either. So, I just started writing code to put the data into some kind of structure, until time ran out. I had years of experience successfully doing exactly what this company does and was completely removed from all consideration because of 1 hackerrank puzzle, that made no sense, and no one could/would explain. I suppose I should be glad to learn how this company operates early. Apparently, developers are not encouraged to understand their tasks before they start slinging code. And again, this was a research position.

Stay away from this company. Terrible recruiting process, there’s a reason people work for larger DoD contractors. Completely wasted my time and made me come on-site going through the interview circuit. I had told them upfront about salary expectations and clearance, but somehow they used that to rescind my offer a week later. Such a joke.