Scale AI is a fast-growing, fast-paced AI company based in San Francisco. It was founded in 2016 as a data-labeling start-up and has grown into a major player in the AI space with hundreds of employees.
Scale AI provides an end-to-end solution to manage the entire ML lifecycle for well-known customers, including Open AI, Nvidia, Meta, and Microsoft.
Below, we summarize the Scale AI interview process and the questions you should expect to answer.
What is the Scale AI interview process?
The interview process at Scale AI is very similar to that of other competitive tech companies.
Scale AI’s interviews have three parts and are usually conducted virtually. Scale AI wants candidates who stand out, work hard, and are especially skilled at problem-solving, which is assessed throughout multiple rounds.
The Scale AI interview process typically takes about one month and involves:
- Recruiter phone screen,
- Technical screen or hiring manager interview,
- Final round.
Recruiter phone screen
The first step of Scale AI’s interview process is a phone call with a recruiter. This is standard compared to other tech companies.
Expect to discuss your background and motivation for working at Scale AI and hear more details about the role and team to ensure your alignment.
Research beforehand to talk thoroughly about Scale AI and show your interest.
Technical screen
Next in Scale AI’s interview process is a one-hour coding challenge on HackerRank. Expect to receive one or two medium-hard difficulty questions. The questions are often scenario-based, and a card game question is prevalent.
Coding topics to prepare for:
- BFS
- Reverse routing
- OOP
- Debugging
Nontechnical roles get a one-hour hiring manager screen instead of the technical challenge, depending on the role.
This is followed by a take-home assignment to later present in the final round.
Final rounds
The final round at Scale AI typically consists of 3–4 loops conducted virtually all in one day. Some candidates also receive additional interviews as needed after the final round.
Every candidate receives a behavioral loop as part of their final round to assess culture fit with Scale AI. The other loops vary depending on the specific role's domain knowledge.
Top Scale AI Interview Questions
These are real interview questions from Scale AI reported by candidates.
Behavioral
- What is the most impressive thing you have done?
- Tell me about yourself.
- What would your colleagues say are your strengths and weaknesses?
- What is the most challenging project you've done?
- Tell me about your background and highlight how it fits this role.
- Why are you interested in Scale AI?
Coding
- Implement a card game according to the given criteria.
- How do you balance scale and maintainability?
- Create a task scheduler.
- Create an application for a game.
- Given a word, make a program that prints the word's characters ordered by their frequency.
System design
- Design a language detection system.
- Design a product recommendation system.
- Design a next-word prediction system.
- Improve a given system with your specialization: recommendations, natural language processing, or computer vision.
- Tell me about a system design problem you solved with machine learning.
Machine learning
- Explain a typical computer vision pipeline.
- Describe the distribution between the 5th and 6th points in an interval from 0 to 1 containing ten uniformly distributed points.
- Tell me about your experience with natural language processing.
- Tell me about your experience with computer vision.
- How do you handle the trade-off between detection accuracy and computational efficiency in a rotated object detection task?
- What are the differences between supervised and unsupervised learning?
Data science
- Tell me when you used a specific metric to drive change in your department.
- What is overfitting or underfitting? Which models are most likely to experience this, and why?
- What are common linear regression problems?
- Implement k-means clustering.
- How do you deal with interference?
Product management
- How would you determine the pay structure for data labeling teams?
- Describe work you’ve done directly with customers.
- What is a project that you worked on with engineering?
- Explain a time you had to deal with a difficult customer.
- Given a spreadsheet of data columns, design a data product.
Scale AI Interview Loops Explained
Behavioral
The behavioral interview at Scale AI is a key part of every candidate’s final round. Scale AI’s behavioral round assesses culture and values fit.
Scale AI emphasizes its core values, problem-solving and collaboration skills, and intense work environment. It doesn’t hide its fast pace and long hours, so if that excites you, communicate how you worked hard in the past and are ready to do the same at this company.
Practice answering behavioral questions using the STAR framework to organize your thoughts.
Prepare examples of past experiences that fit their core values and highlight your talents in problem-solving and collaboration. Scale AI loves to hire people who stand out, so prepare an answer for their common question, “What is the most impressive thing you have done?”
They also love to hire people who are passionate about their company, so practice a response to “Why Scale AI?”
Scale AI’s core values:
- Earn customer love,
- Intellectual rigor, open mind,
- Ambition shapes reality,
- Team flow,
- Ownership is the job,
- Run through walls,
- Why not faster?
- Results speak loudest.
Coding
Scale AI’s coding interview emphasizes practical skills. Expect standard coding questions but focusing on day-to-day coding rather than algorithms.
Questions often focus on design, scalability, and implementation. Scale AI’s coding rounds often assess fast coding skills, too, because they require you to do a lot in a short time.
Prepare to code in Python.
System design
Engineers get a system design interview for their final round at Scale AI. Expect a standard round, whiteboard-style, with real-world and AI-specific system design questions.
Questions often focus on scalability, efficiency, and implementation.
Prepare and practice designing distributed systems, API-driven platforms, and data pipelines and integrating machine learning workflows into system architectures.
Because Scale AI emphasizes problem-solving throughout the interview process, talk out loud throughout your design process to communicate your problem-solving approach.
Machine learning
Scale AI’s machine learning interview starts with a take-home ML challenge, either computer vision or natural learning processing, to complete within a week.
Scale AI’s ML interviews combine standard coding questions with more practical ML skills; expect questions representative of day-to-day work and to code in Python.
ML topics to prepare for:
- ML concepts
- LLMs
- CV
- NLP
- Data manipulation
- Q-learning
- Python
- PyTorch
Data science
Data scientists at Scale AI build the DS infrastructures for Scale AI’s genAI products.
The data science interview includes a case study, and the technical interview includes coding and ML problems. Scale AI looks for candidates who will drive insights to improve the business.
Scale AI wants data scientists who are rigorous, detail-oriented, adept problem-solvers, and great at distilling down complexity.
Brush up on DS topics (including data visualization, statistics, cleaning data, exploratory data analysis, and A/B testing), ML fundamentals, and coding in Python.
Product management
At Scale AI, the product management interview involves a take-home case study and a live presentation of that assignment.
Beyond that, expect one or two additional PM rounds, about 45 minutes each, focused on problem-solving, standard strategy, scaling, and product-based questions.
The additional rounds may involve mini-case studies to assess your brainstorming, problem-solving, and decision-making skills.
Scale AI Interview Tips
Scale AI values problem-solving.
Scale AI assesses problem-solving skills in new candidates in each round of the interview process. Be ready with anecdotes from past experiences that show off this skill in behavioral rounds.
Discuss your thought process and decision-making in technical rounds to communicate your problem-solving approach.
Scale AI is a fast-paced, intense workplace.
Scale AI doesn’t hide its fast pace and long hours. Reflect on whether your work style fits this environment before applying to a Scale AI role. If that excites you, communicate in your interviews how you worked hard in the past and are ready to do the same in this role.
Know Scale AI inside and out.
Get to know Scale AI’s products and current ventures to be interested, knowledgeable, and ready to answer practical questions. Check out Scale AI’s blog and product pages: Scale Data Engine, Scale GenAI Platform, and Scale Donovan.
FAQs
How competitive are Scale AI interviews?
Scale AI has a high standard for talent and a unique company working environment. Their interviews are competitive and challenging. The technical rounds are the most difficult. Preparation is essential.
How should I prepare for my interview at Scale AI?
Balance studying domain knowledge with studying Scale AI. For behavioral interviews, research Scale AI’s products and core values.
Practice technical questions in Python and refresh your domain-specific knowledge. Overall, rehearse answers to Scale AI's interview questions and practice questions ahead of time in a peer mock interview.
Does Scale AI hire students or new grads?
Yes! Scale AI offers opportunities for new grads and interns. Filter by “University” in the Department dropdown on Scale AI’s open roles page to see current roles for new grads or interns.
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