I applied through university. The process took 2 days. I interviewed at Palantir Technologies (Palo Alto, CA) in Oct 2008
Interview
There was a 2-level phone screen, primarily based on Java programming. The on-site interview involved a brief (literally 30 second) meeting with the CEO, followed by a series of 30 minute interviews lasting essentially all day. There were about 10-15 other candidates there at the same time, so we were basically shuttled around between different "stations" and asked to do Java on whiteboards.
The company has a traditional startup feel to it, so you have to be interested in that for this to be a good fit. I went in expecting to be asked to work 60 hours a week, and to get a reasonable share in the company (at the time I interviewed, they told me there were about 100 software engineers on staff). Long story short, they are looking for people to work about 60 hours a week, but they're not compensating for that with their pay package.
The interview process itself was quite intense (expect 8-10 half hour interview sessions), but friendly and not overly difficult.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
How would you find the shortest path between two nodes in a graph? Write code in Java to do this.
I interviewed at Palantir Technologies (Miami, FL) in June 2026
Interview
Started with a recruiter screen where the whole point is just checking if you actually care about their mission and the real-world impact of their software, rather than just wanting a cool tech job. After that was a 90 minute hackerrank OA that felt more like an implementation mini-project with SQL and Python instead of abstract algorithms.
The onsite was a 4-round loop chosen from decomp, re-engineering, learning, coding, and sys design. Decomp is the most important one - they give you a super vague prompt like designing a chess game or tracking a disease from scratch, and you have to map out the inputs and logic out loud. Re-engineering gives you around 1000 lines of code with a very subtle logical bug to fix, and the learning round drops you into a random API with barely any documentation to see how fast you pick it up lol. Coding was standard LC mediums but they squeeze a 20-minute behavioral chat right into the middle of it, and sys design was heavy on data governance and fault tolerance. The final chat with the hiring manager is pretty intense too ngl. They will actually make you redo parts of the onsite you struggled with. For prep, don't just mindlessly grind LeetCode. Practice reading other people's code fast and structuring ambiguous problems. I got a really good Palantir coach on Prepfully who helped a lot to catch my blind spots and get a reality check before the actual loop. Overall, not very easy though
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
A payment processing module has a race condition that produces incorrect totals under concurrent writes. Walk through how you would identify the root cause and propose a fix.
I interviewed at Palantir Technologies (New York, NY)
Interview
Great interview process - 1. Recruiter call 2. Leetcode style technical 3. Scoping style (decomp) interview 4. Frontend coding 5. Another scoping (decomp round).
Interviewers were fun and engaging, and I felt challenged in a positive way.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Why do you want to work here?
What are you looking for in your next role.
Recruiter flaked me 3 times and this was always during the time of the interview. I would join the interview meeting and the recruiter would say ahh sorry I got a conflict, next time.