Found the job on LinkedIn and applied directly on their website. Round 1 — HR Screen: A call with the HR, very pleasant. She verified if my experience suited the role. Took about 5 days to hear back about the next step. Round 2 — Technical Discussion: A 1-hour call with the Team Lead and a Staff Engineer. Surface-level discussion on technical topics — technologies I've worked with and what they do. Decision came back within a day. Round 3 — Case Study: They sent a take-home case study to complete over the weekend. It included some technical questions and a coding challenge — writing a TCP server to listen to an example client using Protobuf, with specific edge cases to handle. Round 4 — Case Study Review: After a day of review, a call to discuss the completed case study. They asked questions around my answers and had me modify the client example live to test the edge cases. Round 5 — Team Introduction: About 5 days later, HR reached out to say they wanted to move forward and introduce me to the team. Two days after that, a casual call with the actual team — no technical questions, just a friendly conversation where we got to know each other's backgrounds. Offer: The next day, HR called me directly to discuss the salary. I confirmed after a day, and she sent the draft contract that same evening. I took 5 days to review it and signed.