Atlan Engineering Fellowship Selection Process

In September 2024, I came across the Atlan Engineering Fellowship Program, a unique opportunity that stood out because it combined fellowship and internship. This program not only promised a week-long immersive experience in Delhi but also opened the doors to a six-month full-time remote internship. The chance to interact with fellow engineers and leadership teams and work closely with Atlan’s culture was exciting, and I decided to apply.

Resume Shortlisting and Coding Test

The first step was a resume shortlisting process. Once my application was selected, I received an email for the online coding test. The test consisted of two fairly easy questions that I solved in under 10 minutes. Thankfully, this qualified me for the next round, which involved a more challenging task.

The Challenge: Build a Full-Stack Website

I received the next stage of the challenge, which was to build a full-stack website. The task? A personalized itinerary generator. The goal was to demonstrate our skills in frontend, backend, database management, and API design. This was a brilliant way for them to assess our problem-solving, technical, and design skills holistically.

My Challenge: https://atlanhq.notion.site/Atlan-Engineering-Fellowship-Task-2024-250dc1e3120a4404bdea88eab4cadedc

Other challenges that were given to candidates: https://atlanhq.notion.site/Atlan-Engineering-Internship-Task-11c0e027187b80c0b036c90057d6806c

I was given a week to complete the task, after which I submitted:

• A deployed website.
• A GitHub repository containing the source code.
• A technical documentation explaining the architecture and decisions made during development.
• A short demo video (screen recording of the working of my website)

This was a crucial stage (and the most challenging one, as it’s also eliminatory in nature) that tested my coding and my ability to think about scalability, optimization, and user experience.

Note: They do not entertain any kind of plagiarism or malpractice. Candidates who copied projects from GitHub or any plagiarism was found in their code, were not selected for the next round. Make sure you write your own code from scratch. It will not only help you learn but it’s also pretty fun!

Interview Process

After a few days of anticipation, I was informed that I had qualified for the challenge and would proceed to the interview stage. My interview was a 50-minute task discussion round, where I had the chance to discuss my work with a front-end engineer and a back-end engineer from Atlan.

The interview was an insightful conversation in which I shared the following:

• My developed website, giving a live demo.
• A walkthrough of my code on GitHub.
• An overview of the MongoDB database that powered my project.
• The back-end of my website which was deployed on Render.

They asked me a variety of questions related to:

• Optimization: How I optimized my code for performance and efficiency.
• Scalability: My approach to making the website scalable for more users.
• UI Design: The thought process behind the user interface and user experience.
• Handling edge cases: How I dealt with scenarios like missing data or unusual user input.
• Additional features: Suggestions on how I could improve the website and what extra features I would add if given more time.

This round gave me a fantastic opportunity to explain my thought process, defend my design choices, and discuss areas for improvement. It was a stimulating conversation with the interviewers, and it challenged me to think about how I would handle real-world issues in a production environment.

The entire experience was incredibly valuable. I learned much about full-stack development, scalability challenges, and performance optimization.

For anyone considering applying to the Atlan Engineering Fellowship Program, my advice is to dive in. It’s a fantastic learning opportunity, and whether or not you make it to the end, you will walk away with new skills, insights, and a deeper understanding of software engineering!