What is it like to interview with the Cesium team at AGI?

Update!

For a more up-to-date approach on interviewing for the Cesium team, see Our New Approach to Interviewing Developers.

Given all the excitement around Cesium, AGI has multiple technical openings on the Cesium team. I wanted to give some insight into the interview process.

Code Portfolio

We don’t believe in brainteasers or traditional behavioral interviews. We believe in code. We’ll want to see your code portfolio, e.g., perhaps your GitHub profile, before the interview that shows off all the awesome code you’ve written. Ideally, you have developed a small app built on Cesium (start here) or have a portfolio of relevant work, e.g., if you are interested in a 3D graphics position, you may have a graphics engine of your own.

If you write something from scratch for the interview, a few hundred lines of code is plenty. I suggest combining one of your passions with Cesium

For some positions, like developer relations, we’ll also request a writing sample, such as a blog or whitepaper. Length doesn’t matter here. Longer is not better; a few pages is plenty.

Presentation

We ask that you prepare a 25-minute presentation that you’ll give to five to ten people at the start of your interview. If you are applying for a developer relations position, this presentation may be a walkthrough of an app you built with Cesium. If you are applying for a graphics position, this may be a quick overview of your graphics engine, followed by a deep-dive into select algorithms and optimizations. If you are applying for an architecture role, this may be the design of a large system you created, including trade-offs and technology choices.

Longer isn’t necessarily better; 25 minutes is plenty. Be crisp and clear, and provide enough context so we can follow. Show a live demo.

Individual Meetings

You’ll get to meet individually with all the developers on the Cesium team. We’ll do a bit of coding and talk about a variety of topics like language concepts, fundamental computer science algorithms, optimization, design approaches, testing, documentation, git, libraries, and so on. We may ask follow-up questions from your presentation. We’ll also discuss topics specific to the position. For example, for a 3D graphics position, we may talk about linear algebra, splines, GPU architecture, WebGL, and culling and LOD algorithms. For a web application developer, we may discuss the full stack from UI to REST APIs to back-end databases.

We want to learn about you, and also give you the opportunity to learn about us.

Tour and Lunch

In addition to the tech talk, we’ll also give you a tour of AGI headquarters to see the gym, free laundry, free food and drinks, kids room, and the Cesium lab itself. You’ll also get a demo of our Commercial Space Operations Center (ComSpOC) setup, which has several very impressive satellite displays built on Cesium.

At lunch, we’ll make sure you are well-fed and give you an opportunity to relax with the Cesium team and other AGIers.

If working with the AGI team interests you, check out our Cesium openings.