Magalix Engineering Interview Guide

We are incubated in one of the Coolest Offices in Egypt

We believe that the value of Magalix stems from each team member. That is why we put a lot of emphasis on our hiring and onboarding of new team members. Here are some guidelines to set you up for success during the interview process. 

What Do we Look for?

We are looking for engineers who can take on technical challenges, feel comfortable with ambiguity, and work well within a team to deliver great products to our customers.  During the interview, we will try to assess your:

• Technical breadth and depth on a variety of relevant technical topics
• Communication skills for both listening and speaking
• Leadership style and team work

How to Prepare for the Interview?

Start with sending us a good resume that summarizes your experience and skills. We want to know the type of problems you solved, the results you achieved, and the impact of what you delivered.  

What Topics Do we Cover?

We usually cover multiple areas depending on the role and your level of experience. However, we cover all aspects below by the end of the process:

• Problem Solving:  We focus on core computer science problems that are commonly taught in undergraduate programs (e.g. data structures and algorithms). We look for your ability to explain why you chose certain solutions and the tradeoffs in time and space complexities (e.g. Big-O notation).  
• Programming:  We want to see your coding skills and how you consider edge cases and testing. It is important to ask a lot of questions and think out loud. Be methodical and explain your thought process. Have your IDE ready if you prefer that and we will ask you to code in the programming language you are most comfortable with. 
• Systems Design: We want to understand your knowledge and experience with designing large systems. We focus on distributed systems design and technologies. We want to assess your understanding of common system design patterns and pitfalls. We either ask you to design a hypothetical system or ask you to do a deep dive in a system you already worked on. 
• Projects: Be prepared to discuss any technical projects you listed in your resume. Be sure to explain the context and your specific role and responsibilities, as well as your achievements, technologies used, and development process.

What Leadership Principles Do we Look for?

We expect everyone at Magalix to be a leader. Being technically competent is not sufficient to pass our interview process. Our culture is built on the following leadership principles which we used to evaluate candidates and existing employees:

• Start with the Customer: Build the right thing.
  Start with the customer and work backwards. It is about delivering the "right" things and understanding the customer needs.
• Strive for Operational Excellence: Build it right
  Deliver "robust" and "stable" solutions. It is about delivering things "right" ?
• Have a Bias for Action: Just Do It.
  Get things done and be accountable. Keep moving and own your tasks, your systems, your successes, and your failures.
• Be Curious: Ask why
  Question why things are the way they are. Dig deeper to understand what is under the hood.
• Be Innovative: Ask why not
  If you only listen to your customers, you will fail. Innovate on their behalf and think outside the box. Question the status quo and propose better solutions.
• Deliver Results: Measure success
  You can't achieve what you can't measure and activity does not mean progress. Be result-oriented and data-driven in your decision making.

We will ask you about times when you demonstrated these skills. Remember to talk about relevant details by stating what the challenge was, how you addressed the issue, and what was the final outcome.

Any Other Tips?

• Go through the Magalix website and understand our product. This is very important!
• Read about cloud-native and Kubernetes if you don’t know them already.
• During the interview, answer questions as briefly as possible and give a chance to the interviewer to steer the discussion. 
• When asked for example situations, make sure to be specific and describe an actual situation. Talking in generality or what should be done but not mentioning a specific example from your experience doesn’t help your interviewer evaluate your skills. 
• We ask questions that might be vague on purpose to understand how you handle ambiguity.  Ask questions to clarify the requirements.
• Have questions for us (ask about the position, team, and/or product).