I was offered "Senior Software Engineer - Distributed Systems" position.
The whole process took a month with following steps:
Head hunter asking if I would be interested
Skyscanner HR call to talk details and next step
Coding challenge in Hired.com
First Round
1. Depth of Expertise: Discussion about a past project with focus on the technical details. The reasoning behind the design, pros and cons, how to improve, scalability, resiliency, etc.
2. Cultural: Talk about past projects but soft-skill oriented. How I convince the team to choose my idea, how I check if idea works, how I support my ideas.
Second Round
1. Hard Problem 1: Design a system that is going to be used in company. Starting high-level then going into details. Explaining the design, how to tackle with scalability, fault tolerance. How to improve it, etc.
2. Cultural: Similar to first cultural interview but focusing on leadership. What initiatives I took by giving an example and answering questions around the example.
3. Hard Problem 2: Another system design session, same as first hard problem but for a subject.
After each round, HR arranged a call to provide the feedback from the interviews and explaining what is going to happen in next steps. Also answering any questions I have. (A really nice thing were you are told at what you are good or bad - subjectively).
I was not offered a position due to Skyscanner not considering me as a senior and they have decided not to sponsor visas for any position below senior level (I am not interviewing for a position in my homeland.)
Overall the experience was between so-so and not good. In the beginning I explained the head hunter that I joined a company recently and asked if he's or Skyscanner is ok with that. Later, one of the feedbacks was "he is moving between jobs too fast".
First round was re-scheduled without any notice, early or late. I was waiting for someone to show up but no one came, then I decided to write if I miss something. I got a reply where I think the person had no clue about what is going on (HR is distributed, one person is contacting from Europe, other from Asia..). The person wrote "yeah, we rescheduled it". Wow, that's nice. Good leadership example hey!
The second cultural interview was weird, I explained a nice good leadership example (Of course subjectively) where I highly doubt that people are allowed to practice in Skyscanner but, the feedback was "lack of leadership examples". I even told that I could give another example to support myself in the interview.
Good thing is that I didn't had to wait weeks or months before each step. Things were progressing fast. The second round feedback was really good like the first one except, I didn't show enough leadership examples and that's why Skyscanner is not considering me as a senior engineer (!?). Anyway I am not a title crazy person and I am ok with that. But this meant that they can't offer me what I expect which was not millions of dollars.
Anyway I was ok moving with my current salary or we could even come up with ideas and agree on a common ground. I kind of liked the place (the technical personel).
Funny thing is that I had to talk these things over where Skyscanner acted like a shy baby girl. A company that highly emphasizes "Leadership" and not baby girl shyness.
The process continued another week where Skyscanner worked out on an offer (at least that was told). But I was explained the situation that leadership decided -on last minute- that they won't be sponsoring visa/permits for non-senior candidates. I know that this is not HR's call (at least naively), but, at this stage and where I was willing to negotiate and be ready to forget all the good leadership examples (!), I think it is disrespectful and unprofessional.