To stand out in the & General Intuition interview process, you must demonstrate a rare combination of deep technical expertise, systems-level thinking, and a bias for action. Interviewers are looking for candidates who can think from first principles rather than relying on standard enterprise patterns.

Your preparation should focus on demonstrating strength across these core evaluation criteria:

Role-Related Knowledge – You must show a mastery of low-level systems, networking, and operating system fundamentals. For Systems Architect roles, this means a deep understanding of RTOS scheduling, POSIX compliance, memory-mapped I/O, and concurrency primitives. For Solutions Architect roles, you need a strong grasp of distributed systems, API design, and hardware-software integration.

Problem-Solving Ability – Interviewers will present highly ambiguous, real-world scenarios. They want to see how you break down complex problems, identify constraints, make structured trade-offs, and design pragmatic solutions that work in the field, not just on paper.

Mission Alignment & Ownership – & General Intuition values intense ownership, speed, and a mission-first mindset. You should be prepared to discuss how you take responsibility for end-to-end outcomes, how you handle high-pressure situations, and why you are motivated to solve hard technical challenges that directly impact real-world operations.

Collaborative Communication – As an architect, you must translate complex technical concepts for diverse stakeholders, from software engineers and hardware designers to product managers and customer operations teams. You will be evaluated on your ability to articulate your designs clearly, defend your decisions rationally, and incorporate feedback constructively.

The interview loop at & General Intuition is rigorous, transparent, and designed to evaluate your practical capabilities rather than your academic credentials. The company aims to move quickly, respecting candidates' time while ensuring a deep mutual fit.

The process typically begins with a recruiter screen to discuss your background, career goals, and alignment with the company's mission. This is followed by one or two technical phone screens focusing on systems fundamentals, coding, or high-level architecture. If you pass these initial stages, you will move to a comprehensive onsite interview loop consisting of multiple deep-dive technical sessions and behavioral discussions.

Throughout the process, the focus is on collaborative problem-solving. Interviewers will treat you like a peer, often working through real, unscripted engineering challenges together on a whiteboard. They are less interested in whether you arrive at a single "correct" answer and more interested in your thought process, your adaptability, and your technical depth.

The visual timeline above outlines the typical progression from your initial application to the final offer. Use this timeline to pace your preparation, ensuring you dedicate sufficient time to master low-level systems concepts before your technical screens, while reserving energy for the intense, multi-round onsite loop.

To succeed at & General Intuition, you must perform exceptionally well across several distinct technical and behavioral evaluation areas. Below is a detailed breakdown of what to expect and how to prepare for each.

Operating System Primitives & Real-Time Constraints

For both Systems Architect and Solutions Architect roles, a solid understanding of how software interacts with the underlying operating system and hardware is non-negotiable. If you are interviewing for a Systems Architect - RTOS or POSIX position, this will be the primary focus of your technical evaluation.

You must demonstrate a thorough understanding of how kernels manage resources, schedule tasks, and handle communication between processes. You should be prepared to discuss how to write highly deterministic software that meets strict real-time deadlines without failing under load.

Be ready to go over:

• Concurrency & Synchronization – Mutexes, semaphores, spinlocks, barrier synchronization, and lock-free programming primitives.
• Memory Management – Virtual memory, page tables, memory-mapped file I/O, cache coherency, and dynamic memory allocation constraints in real-time systems.
• Process & Thread Scheduling – Real-time scheduling algorithms (e.g., Rate Monotonic, Earliest Deadline First), priority inversion, and techniques to mitigate latency jitter.
• Advanced concepts (less common) – Custom bootloaders, kernel-space driver development, writing POSIX-compliant wrappers for non-POSIX RTOS environments, and debugging kernel panics.

Example scenarios:

• "Design a thread-safe, non-blocking circular queue for passing sensor data from an interrupt service routine to a low-priority processing thread."
• "Explain how you would diagnose and resolve a sporadic deadlock in a multi-threaded POSIX application running on an embedded system."

Distributed Edge Architecture & Networking

At & General Intuition, systems are rarely isolated; they operate as part of a highly distributed, collaborative network. You will be evaluated on your ability to design resilient, secure, and performant architectures that span edge devices, local gateways, and centralized cloud environments.

Your designs must account for the harsh realities of field deployments, including high packet loss, low bandwidth, asymmetric routing, and active network interference.

Be ready to go over:

• Network Protocols – Deep understanding of TCP/IP, UDP, gRPC, WebRTC, and specialized lightweight protocols like MQTT or custom UDP-based messaging.
• Data Serialization & Storage – Protocol Buffers, FlatBuffers, flat-file storage, and embedded databases optimized for high-write, low-power edge environments.
• Resilient Synchronization – Conflict-Free Replicated Data Types (CRDTs), consensus algorithms (Raft, Paxos) adapted for edge constraints, and store-and-forward architectures.
• Advanced concepts (less common) – Software-defined networking (SDN) in mesh topologies, zero-trust network architectures for edge devices, and optimizing network stacks for satellite communications.

Example scenarios:

• "Architect a system that allows ten autonomous ground sensors to share tracking data and agree on the location of a target without relying on a central coordinator."
• "How would you design a telemetry pipeline that dynamically adjusts its data compression and transmission frequency based on real-time network quality measurements?"

System Integration & Mission Engineering

This evaluation area focuses on your ability to build complete, end-to-end solutions. You must demonstrate that you can take a set of physical components, legacy protocols, and modern software services and integrate them into a cohesive, secure, and reliable system.

You will need to show that you understand the physical and operational constraints of deploying systems in the field, including power budgets, environmental hazards, and security threats.

Be ready to go over:

• Hardware-Software Interfaces – Serial communication (RS-232, RS-485, CAN bus), SPI, I2C, and PCIe interfaces.
• Security & Cryptography – Hardware security modules (HSMs), Trusted Platform Modules (TPMs), secure boot, end-to-end encryption, and key rotation at the edge.
• Fault Tolerance & Recovery – Watchdog timers, fail-safe modes, redundant hardware integration, and automated system recovery procedures.
• Advanced concepts (less common) – Integrating military standard protocols (e.g., MIL-STD-1553, STANAG), designing systems to withstand electromagnetic interference (EMI), and implementing physical tamper-detection mechanisms.

Example scenarios:

• "Design the software and hardware integration architecture for an autonomous turret system that must receive targeting commands, control physical motors, and report status back to a central console."
• "How would you architecture a secure boot and firmware verification pipeline for a device that is deployed in an unsecured physical location?"