Skytree interview questions

Initial contact was from the in-house recruiter, followed by a coffee meeting with the VP/Engineering. Then there was a delay of a few weeks. Followup was an invitation for me to present the results of my recent work on real-time time-series analytics to the entire company, which I felt was a real honor and allowed me to demonstrate what I had developed and how it could benefit Skytree if I was to work there. The audience was very attentive and questions were insightful and plenty. My conversations (low-key interviews) with the executives and engineers were enjoyable and very stimulating. I was blown away by the caliber of the people I was introduced to, including Leland Wilkinson the author of "Grammar of Graphics" who is their VP of data visualization, who was basically amazing. Discussions with Alex (founder) were illuminating: he comes across as having a clear vision for where the industry is going, and how Skytree can and will play into the evolution of machine learning for big-data systems over the coming years. His main point is the "everybody's talking about big data but nobody's doing it ... right" opinion I've heard expressed in various forums. I personally feel Alex has the right approach, and I could easily align with his direction. The interview was very enjoyable, but the delay in engagement had caused me to engage with another company, and in the end I chose to go with them. Skytree would have been my first choice otherwise.

There was a coding assessment up front. The onsite interview consisted of a presentation of my research and 1-on-1's with the team. I really liked that there was a job talk part which puts Skytree's hiring process closer to research labs than regular industry jobs. In the individual interviews, there are no gotcha questions and it felt more like a conversation where they tried to get to know me and understand what I can contribute. As it is a small team, you will get to interact directly with CTO (Prof. Gray) , Visualization VP Leland (of grammar of graphics fame) and their stellar cast of researchers. The team is extremely qualified, but very modest. The flagship product of the company is an enterprise-grade big data ML software. Skytree is perhaps the only game in town now in terms of the breadth and scalability of the algorithms and is poised to be a very powerful player in this space. The compensation they offer (with very little negotiation) is competitive and the recruiter is extremely helpful and always available. I had to turn down the offer due to personal reasons.