Enjoyable initial interview with two engineers, good informal back and forth conversation about experience etc. Then assigned take home tech test, spent a good amount of time and effort to complete the task but then also add additional functionality (expected for senior role), only to be emailed that the role had been filled before I could submit the test. Definitely leaves a bad taste in your mouth and questions whether you would want to work there in the first place. I'd recommend Starling review this process as to not miss out on talented engineers and to not deter them from reapplying in the future.

1. A chat with a Frontend engineer 2. A take home technical assignment The first chat was ok. I was left surprised that the person I spoke to had not heard about some mainstream cutting edge technologies. However, overall it still left me looking forward to the technical test. My main reservation was that I was not sure how modern the stack and their approach to building tech is due to that person’s knowledge gap. The exercise itself is very accessible - building a simple feature using their sandbox (there are tests out there that are much more complex which I sailed through). However, what should be straight forward will end up taking a lot of time due to how disappointingly buggy the sandbox is (e.g. loading infinitely before timing out is one of the main issues encountered). My main issue lies with the apparent lack of consideration for candidates’ time and effort through how these tests seem to be reviewed. I built the exercise with several unit and integration tests as well, extra endpoints, and it all worked perfectly. I simulated data and the results were always correct. I employed various advanced features to showcase my knowledge. In the end, the feedback received was not related to how I performed against the task (i.e. does the feature work? how is the quality of the code? how was the approach to solving the problem? did they have comments on technology choices? how was the test coverage? etc.) but was summarised to extremely superficial things such as "too much white space on the page", "having to install a dependency" (which is an indication of the reviewers not having read the README…), and other nitpicky ‘non-issues’ that could easily be fixed given more time. There is no time limit on when to submit the task, however reviewers should not expect submissions that are ‘production standard’ given this is still a take-home exercise for an interview process. Despite the fact that the job market is currently in favour of employers, Starling Bank should still be considerate of candidates' time. Candidates have a full time job and a home life! Having worked and successfully passed technical challenges for much bigger names in Tech, this process has been by far the most disappointing I have experienced and does not reflect kindly on the quality of their engineering team or the company itself. I would advise to think twice before applying.