I applied through an employee referral. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at PwC (Düsseldorf) in Jul 2026
Interview
The process was fairly quick, and the interviewers were incredibly friendly. I did not have an HR interview, likely because I was referred. I had two relatively easy technical interviews, both conducted online and in German. I received the acceptance notice 10 days after the final interview.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
In the first technical interview, I was asked some basic AI- and RAG-related questions. The main use case was to design the architecture of a RAG system on an online whiteboard, which I found straightforward. The follow-up questions were also relatively easy.
In the second technical interview, I was given a well-known SQL problem often referred to as the "highest salary per department" question. The task was to write an SQL query that returns the employee with the highest salary in each department. Solving it required using JOINs and nested queries.
I applied through a recruiter. I interviewed at PwC
Interview
One HR intro interview, and two technical rounds. Mostly theoretical questions. Second technical round very wide regarding the tech stack. Taking too long in my opinion. They keep contacting past candidates after rejecting them.
I did an introductory interview, online assessments, an interview with HR, and a case study involving coding. Apparently I failed the coding test which I thought made no sense due to the massive scope of the task and extremely limited amount of time given (and yes, I have previous relevant experience so I am qualified to say this). It was very strange in comparison to other AI Engineering interviews I have done, so I felt like they really wasted my time because I anyway had no chance.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Implement a chatbot, but given the "client case" it could have been approached in so many different ways (basic SQL, vector search, etc) and they gave me something like 20 minutes to plan and then 25 minutes or so to code the whole thing. It made absolutely no sense.