I applied through a staffing agency. I interviewed at Alpaca (Dubai) in May 2026
Interview
Round 1 HR round checking tech and business background.
Round 2 Take home exercise to be solved in low level programming languages like c++ , rust or go.
Problem statement is shared below
Problem: Real-time Hungarian lottery winner reporting (5/90, win on 2–5 matches) for ~10M players.
Core challenge: Load 10M tickets from file, output READY, then answer multiple stdin queries (5 winning numbers) returning 4 counts (2/3/4/5-match winners) in ≤100ms each.
Constraints: Any Linux-compilable language, stdin/stdout, distinct numbers 1-90, fast matching required.
Expected deliverables: Optimized solution, documented asymptotic runtime, code comments, ideas for further speed/scalability improvements.
I applied online. I interviewed at Alpaca (Toronto, ON) in Feb 2026
Interview
probably the worst interview I’ve ever had. the team took 0 time to introduce themselves and got straight into dry, low quality questions. rude personalities. got no offer but early on in the interview i decided these are not people i want to work with
I applied online. I interviewed at Alpaca (Toronto, ON) in Mar 2026
Interview
Recruiter Screen -> Take Home Test -> Hiring Manager Screen -> System Design & General Questions cutting across SQL, OOP and Language of Choice -> CTO Screen (vibe check, questions like what is the closest you have been to dying?).
- Didn't hear back from them, from other reviews it appears this is quite common.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
- Take Home Test is the famous 'Hungarian Lottery', you can look it up.