Applied to the Spacecraft Hardware Engineer position with San Francisco or Glasgow listed as the location. Was sent the hardware challenge to design a satellite power system. It said it should be done in 1-2 pages and under an hour, but ended up taking about 3 hours and 3 pages to answer all the questions. On top of that, it was open ended, saying "can be a high-level design and explanation and can (but doesn't have to) be illustrated using schematics, bill of materials, PCB layout, block diagrams, software (pseudo-)code, test procedures." During this whole process, the location changed from San Francisco or Glasgow to just Glasgow. Received an email a few days later wanting to set up a phone call with the recruiter. They thought I'd fit in well at the company and set up a technical Skype interview. Received another email wanting me to set up a final technical Skype interview with the co-founder. Heard back a few days later in an email from the recruiter that I wasn't the right fit for the position.

A recruiter from Spire got in touch with me via Linkedin and invited me to apply for the role. After an initial screening, I was invited to a technical interview with a senior engineer. Following this, I was invited to 4 further interviews with various members of the engineering team. These interviews were billed as "values" based, but turned out to be more technical focused, with many of the questions being repeated between interviewers. I then presented a high level solution to a design challenge that I had been given prior to the 4 interviews, and took questions on my solution. After this, I was invited to another technical interview, as supposedly one of the interviewers hadnt asked all the technical questions they wanted to. In said interview wasnt asked anything I hadnt already been asked prior. I was then invited to a meeting with one of the directors of the company, which lasted 20 minutes and was just a couple of values based questions. All in all this process took approximately 3 weeks. I got a response a week after this, to say that while they think id be a good fit in the company, my experience with Altium as opposed to the other pcb design packages I have used in the past, wasnt up to scratch and they dont have time to accomodate me getting up to speed with it. This was a bit frustrating as that was discussed in the very first technical interview (and then repeatedly afterwards) and if it was such an issue, they couldve saved us both time by not taking the interview process any further. Additionaly, the technical manager had spoken a good game about how they encourage learning and development withtin their environment. He did however let slip about people not switching off from communications outside of office hours, and then tried to retract and play it down, so perhaps they mean that they encourage it entirely in your own time and not on theirs? That would fit in with not having time to accomodate a new start getting up to speed with a software package.