Arcadia Sr.Manager - Engineering interview questions

First Round: The first round was a brief self-introduction (<20 minutes). At the end, HR informed me that I was “not manager material but can shine with some guidance, so the next round is a coding interview,” yet there was no clarity on whether it would involve DSA, system design, or what tools or API credits would be needed. No substantive evaluation questions or discussion were conducted to justify this assessment. Second Round: The second round was presented as a coding interview for a senior AI managerial role. The interviewer, who claimed to be an AI manager, had two questions: one coding task and one system design task. However, he asked me to jump straight into coding without first discussing system design. He also asked me to fix generated code and make it executable, even though I did not have access to the required models. The discussion included vision models, which were never clarified in the job description — there is a significant difference between CV+AI and NLP+AI, and the JD should specify the focus. For a senior professional, bypassing system design and unclear scope prevents proper evaluation of architectural thinking and technical expertise. The system design portion, listed as the second question, was never addressed. Overall, the process felt like a waste of 90 minutes for both sides. Overall Impression: The evaluation process felt poor, inconsistent, and unstructured. It raised concerns that the senior AI managerial role might not be genuine, and that the process may primarily be aimed at sourcing candidates while giving the impression that some candidates aren’t a fit. While interviewers and HR were friendly, the assessment itself did not reflect a serious evaluation for a senior managerial position.