I applied through a recruiter. I interviewed at PACT Pharma (South San Francisco, CA) in Dec 2020
Interview
I was screened with Sr. Recruiter and then had a half-day panel interview. I was then contacted for feedback and given an offer. I also received a survey to complete.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Why do you want to leave the company that you're at?
I applied online. I interviewed at PACT Pharma in Nov 2020
Interview
There are 4 rounds total for the interview processes.
Round 1. HR phone screen
Round 2. HM video screen
Round 3. Panel video interview with 8 people + 1hr presentation
Round 4. CTO video interview
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Basic process engineering / operation questions.
Handle conflict of interests and tight timeline.
Start up culture readiness.
I applied through a recruiter. I interviewed at PACT Pharma (San Francisco, CA) in Aug 2020
Interview
Phone Screen with Recruiter
Technical Phone screen with hiring manager
Onsite with lab Researcher
Onsite with two Bioinformatics Software Engineers
Onsite with CIO
Onsite with Director of Software Engineering
Onsite with Associate Director of Software Engineering
Onsite with HR staff member
Overall maybe a 6 - 9 hour process. The Software engineering group is all new within the last half year so they are still booting up the team so to speak. Because of that the interviews are focused on heavily drilling into systems design and architecture for bioinformatics pipelines and Django web applications. They will also interrogate you deeply on experiences with past projects. Interview was actually kind of fun.
They have some of the most promising technical work in biotech/pharma right now. I got an offer but turned it down because I don't want to relocate to the Bay Area during a pandemic and being remote is not an option short or long term for the CIO since the role is to support laboratory staff.
The only redflag I found is that all members of the technical interview rounds where Men; I got the feeling they don't have any Women on the Software engineering team. But like I said almost everyone is new within the last half year so that could have changed by the time your reading this.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Tech phone screen was focused on data structures and algorithms in the "cracking the coding interview" type style. You will need to be solid with Linked Lists, Stacks, and Queues both individually and in combination to do well.
Thank you for sharing your feedback! We are glad you had a fun time interviewing with us. Update, we have hired 3 women on the team recently and are becoming more diverse.