I applied online. I interviewed at Cognitiv (Seattle, WA) in Apr 2026
Interview
The interview process at Cognitiv was smooth and well-communicated. After each round, the team proactively sent emails to update me on the next steps, which made the whole process feel organized and respectful of my time. The interviewers were easy to talk with and the conversations flowed naturally.
I applied through an employee referral. I interviewed at Cognitiv (Bellevue, WA) in Aug 2020
Interview
Talked to a couple of people there and was invited to an interview loop. You can tell they are a fast-moving start-up with some very intelligent people. The interview loop consists of talking to 4 people over 2 hours with each person focusing on a core competency listed in the job description.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
The coding problem I got asked was: Create a function that goes from one word to another word changing one letter at a time where each word in-between must exist in a dictionary and returns the shortest number of steps to do this.
I found the solution to this on GeeksForGeeks but still don't know how anyone would solve it, especially in like 20 minutes while someone is watching you code.
SQL questions were straight-forward. I got some definition questions about 'many-to-one' and 'one-to-many' relationships. Other than that, just writing queries to join and aggregate different tables.
Other than that, mainly just behavioral questions, with one big data pipeline hypothetical question about how I would solve the problem they face.