I had my phone screen with a member of the Google SRE team last week. As I mentioned in my previous post, I am interviewing with Google for the Systems SRE role. I was nervous about the interview, given that I had failed this round in my two previous attempts. The interview covers practical coding and scripting and Linux fundamentals/trivia. The best part about being considered for the systems SRE role is that you will not be asked complex algorithmic questions. Questions tend to be more practical. Implementing a system function like “ls” in the coding language of your choice is an example. You would then be asked to optimize your solution and scale it to be able to run on large files or across multiple machines.

The interview also includes a section on Unix/Linux fundamentals/trivia. A lot of these trivia questions used to be asked by recruiters in their initial screening calls, but it has now been moved to the phone screen round. It is good to brush up on system calls, commands and output fields, basic troubleshooting and similar areas.

I interviewed with an SRE manager who was also based in the same time zone as me. After the usual exchange of pleasantries, we discussed some Linux trivia questions and my coding question was an extension of the trivia question that we were discussing about. We were short of time by the time we moved to the coding question, so I ended up having to explain my approach and how I would scale my solution instead of coding it. I felt really happy about the way the interview went, the questions were tricky, but not something someone with years of systems administration experience cannot handle.

One of the more important aspects of this interview and any other round of the Google interview is to express your thoughts clearly, or think out loud to the interviewer. They want to know how you are approaching the problem. Make sure to ask loads of clarifying questions. Ask for help and be honest if you think you are stuck.

A few hours after the interview, my recruiter contacted me to inform that they were satisfied with my performance in the interview and wanted me to schedule a day for my onsite interview. Yay!!

More on that in my next post.