I was contacted by a recruiter initially. I had a phone interview followed by an onsite interview with the reccruiter. After that, they set up a phone interview with the COO. Admittedly, the COO has some technical knowledge but not as much nuts and bolt details as a candidate wants to know. He referred such to their outsourced technical interviewer for the next step.
The phone-based technical interview was really to see if candidates are knowledgable and can articulate technical details as well as have a personable relationship with others in this professional environment. This interview was put off 3 times due to the other person's schedule.
The final interview was with the partners...not just 1 or 2 of them. There were SEVEN partners plus the COO. (That did not rattle me.) They are looking for someone with personal as well as technical skills with experience running multi-site locations 24 X 7 in eastern and pacific time zones.