[05-2025][Apple] iCloud SRE Interview Experience
~ Anonymous
After a decade in the DevOps/SRE field, I recently went through Apple's interview process for their iCloud SRE team in London. The entire journey took one month to complete, and while I didn't get the position, the experience provided valuable insights worth sharing with fellow professionals.
My Study material
Last 60 days apple asked LC questions
System design:
Behavioural interview:
My resume and my experience: I wrote couple of SOAR stories based on HU Competency dictionary
The Interview Process
Initial Screening: The Hiring Manager Round
The process began with a one-hour interview with the hiring manager who focused on:
Assessing my incident management experience
Evaluating my ability to work independently with minimal support
Deep diving into my previous projects and experiences
This conversation set the tone for what Apple was looking for: self-sufficient problem-solvers with strong incident response capabilities.
Technical Screening: First Coding Challenge
A week later, I advanced to a technical screening featuring a LeetCode medium-easish-level challenge specifically on array and string compression. The question required implementing an algorithm that could:
Compress strings according to specific patterns (example mentioned in next section)
Handle various input types and edge cases
Process arrays efficiently
The interviewer focused heavily on my ability to identify and handle all possible edge cases around valid inputs. They were exceptionally helpful throughout, actively communicating and nudging me to consider additional test cases I might have overlooked. This collaborative approach to problem-solving aligned with what I'd witnessed at Meta's interviewing style, making it a genuinely enjoyable technical assessment.
The Full Loop: A 4-5 Hour Marathon
After passing the initial rounds, I was invited to complete Apple's comprehensive interview loop consisting of four distinct segments:
1. Advanced Coding Round
This session featured a challenging LeetCode medium-to-hard problem