Prepare for Palantir with a focused mix of coding, design, and communication. Start with your job description and confirm the interview loop with your recruiter.
01 / MAKE YOUR NEXT SESSION COUNT
Return a binary tree in level order. Compare an iterative queue with recursion and test an empty tree and a long chain.
A correct traversal, bounded auxiliary memory, and a clear explanation of the trade-off.
Merge two sorted arrays. Then adapt your solution when one array has enough unused space to hold both. Explain how you avoid overwriting unread values.
A maintained invariant, correct boundary handling, and justified complexity.
Describe a technical decision you changed after receiving feedback. Explain your contribution and the outcome.
Specific actions, honest reflection, and measurable impact.
BEFORE YOU PRACTICE
Get the details that a generic company guide cannot know.
Company-linked challenges and related lessons from our library. Not a prediction of your interview.
Aggregated from candidate submissions and public sources.
Historical figures from existing records; date and location may be unspecified. Verify current ranges on Levels.fyi.
Software Engineer (Only one level across Palantir)
$190,600
$155,600 base · $12,000 stock · $23,000 bonus
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Reviews originally posted on Glassdoor.
Some (but not all) of the work the company does is incredibly exciting and impactful to real-world problems. Your co-workers will be smart, hard-working, and motivated. There's a very small number of companies in the DC area that offer catered food 3 times a day and have a speakeasy. The perks are real, and while they shouldn't be a deciding factor, they're definitely nice. Stop hiring software engineers to not do software engineering. Don't lie to prospective candidates about their job duties. Consider hiring some people who have demonstrated excellence in leadership, and actually let them be leaders and make decisions.
Brilliant people, domain experts, quick thinkers, constructively critical. Opportunity to solve problems and impact a variety of institutions and domains that doesn't exist anywhere else. Teammates honestly depend on the hard work of each other and it keeps us moving forward. Great culture of working hard on important, high-stakes work and supporting the people you're working with. Not super political.
Very fast career growth. Since your lead probably has significantly more work they'd like to get done than they actually can, if you demonstrate that you be trusted to prioritize, plan, and deliver without their involvement you will be given more and more autonomy, very rapidly. Related to the above: very fast personal growth. Since there is so much more work than can actually get done, you can basically choose any kind of project you wish to work on, and change regularly. You can try out roles you wouldn't normally, and tackle problems in various industries.
Lots of growth opportunities if you're willing to teach yourself Many friendly and curious people Tasty food Fun events Good yoga classes. The wheel is reinvented all the time here since we never actually use industry best practices. The leads are young (especially on product development) and it's an intensely political workplace. Many of the leads are horrible at giving honest feedback and people are frequently burned by this (including myself). People are often praised for working through the night or weekends. They are never praised for planning ahead to avoid such catastrophes. Working long hours is a badge of honor here.
Palantir is a very well run company with incredibly high caliber employees and products. Code reviews are rigorous and the quality of software is stellar. Lots of interesting work, fast-paced team. The culture of the company is such that you do need to be willing to commit more than working hours to it. There is a culture of Palantir being in many aspects of life to weekend hangouts to business trips. . . etc.