I was rejected after the second technical interview. The first round involved implementing a standard Pokémon API system - straightforward but not particularly revealing of senior-level skills. The interviewers seemed unprepared despite being talented developers, and there was some confusion about expectations. The second round asked me to design a payment intermediary service in Excalidraw. The challenge was that they evaluated me on proactively including features like authentication and idempotency, but provided zero context about requirements even when asked. They wanted me to independently drive the architectural discussion while simultaneously giving directive instructions. If you interview here: be aware you're expected to anticipate unstated requirements and lead the design process, even when the framing suggests otherwise. Also note: the position was listed as Software Engineer, but the evaluation criteria seemed more aligned with an Infrastructure Architect or similar role My final suggestion is if you have past experience in designing these kinds of systems, basically copycat wha you have done before. PS, they don't care about your public repos, even if you have designed much more complex systems than this.