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Most guides to Palantir interview questions hand you a list of algorithm problems and wish you luck. That preparation aims at the wrong round. The stage that actually removes candidates at Palantir is called decomposition, and grinding LeetCode does almost nothing to prepare you for it.
The stranger part is that Palantir published advice pointing straight at that round six years ago, on its own blog — and the guides candidates actually read do not cite it.
This guide separates the Palantir interview questions candidates actually reported from what prep pages assume. Every question below carries the date, location and role it was reported under, so you can judge the evidence yourself.
What the Palantir interview questions really test
Palantir builds software deployed into messy institutional environments — hospitals, defence agencies, manufacturers — where the problem is rarely defined before an engineer arrives. Its interview loop mirrors that.
According to interviewing.io, whose page documents its own methodology, the process runs four stages: “Recruiter call (30 minutes), Technical phone screen (1 hour), Onsite (3 hour), Hiring manager screen (1 hour).”
That same page is unusually direct about preparation: “It’s a mix of standard LeetCode-style questions and very non-standard questions. LeetCode prep isn’t going to be enough here.”
It’s worth noting where that claim comes from. interviewing.io states its sourcing openly: “To compile this list, we did two things. First, we spoke to some current and former Palantir engineers. Then we cross-referenced all the anecdotes we heard with Glassdoor data AND our own data-set of mock interviews.” That is a stronger evidence base than most pages ranking for these terms offer.
The primary source the Palantir interview questions guides overlook
In September 2020, Palantir published a blog post collecting interview advice from its own employees. It is the closest thing to an official statement on what the company wants. Of the two most prominent guides checked while writing this article — Exponent’s and Prepfully’s — neither cites Palantir’s own material; both build openly on crowdsourced candidate reports instead. Exponent states its guides come from “recent, real, first-hand insights shared by interviewers and candidates.” That is a legitimate method, but it means the company’s own published advice sits outside the material most candidates read.
An engineer named Robert gives the single most actionable line in it. He recommends practising “deconstructing a problem and articulating how you would address it step-by-step.”
That is a description of the decomposition round. The company told candidates how to prepare for its hardest stage, in plain language, six years before the round became the thing candidates complain about.
Robert also describes the loop’s tone: “Think of each interview as a brainstorming or co-working session with someone; it’s more of a conversation.” And on scale, he notes: “I met with four people who took time out of their work day to speak with me after just one phone screen.”
“We’re not fishing for a success story. We want to hear about an actual failure.” — Michal, quoted in Palantir’s own interview-advice post
Another Palantirian, Antonia, offers: “Be authentic. Show us who you are in every conversation.” Read alongside the behavioural pattern documented further down, that advice is less generic than it first appears.
The decomposition round, explained by people who sat it
Decomposition is the round that distinguishes Palantir interview questions from a standard big-tech loop. Candidates describe it as system design without the familiar scaffolding — no reference architecture to recite, no canonical answer to converge on.
One candidate on Blind put it this way: it is “like system design but for a made up technical problem” — not Twitter, not Uber, but an invented scenario, sometimes handed to you with a dataset attached.
The same thread carries a warning about preparation: “You can’t really study for it since they can ask anything and they just want to see your thought process.”
The taxi problem appears in two independent sources
Here is a finding worth more than any question list. A Glassdoor report from a Forward Deployed Engineer candidate in New York, dated 28 July 2026, gives the decomposition prompt as:
“Design an app for a NYC taxi driver”
Separately, a Blind account describes a decomposition round built on “8,000 taxi records from London” across eight columns — id, fare, start and end location, start and end time, distance — where the task was to “come up with a first cut solution for taxi drivers and suggest ideas to improve their life,” then sketch system components, define the APIs, and code where needed, against a one-week deployment horizon.
Two independent sources, two cities, the same underlying problem shape: an unglamorous real-world operator, a modest dataset, and a week of imaginary runway. That recurrence tells you more about how to prepare than a hundred algorithm problems would.
Where the round surprises people
A Forward Deployed Software Engineer candidate posted a first-hand account on Taro dated 9 November 2025. Their summary of the technical screen was mild — “The coding question was really simple, and the decomp was just a high-level system” — but the onsite decomposition round went differently:
“I was not able to pass this round since it was basically doing SQL queries without actually being able to run the code anywhere.”
They added that the expectation clashed with their background: “I do more AI work and system architecture, but there was an expectation to know specific SQL queries, which I haven’t done for a while.”
This is a single account and should be read as one, not as a rule. But it is consistent with the dataset-driven framing above: if a decomposition prompt arrives with tabular data attached, being fluent in querying that data by hand is not an exotic requirement.
The learning interview, the least-documented of the Palantir interview questions
A second distinctive round shows up in candidate reports. One Blind account describes being introduced to “a new custom concept for package installer such as npm, which can pull package from more than one repo, using multi threading,” then asked to implement functions against Python’s concurrency library. The candidate completed three of five tasks in an hour, with roughly thirty minutes of that hour given to behavioural questions.
The name fits the format: you are handed an unfamiliar API or concept and assessed on how fast you absorb and apply it. Prior memorisation is close to useless.
Real Palantir interview questions candidates reported
What follows is the verified pool. These Palantir interview questions come from Glassdoor reports across five separate role pages — Forward Deployed Engineer, Software Engineer, Software Engineer Intern, Deployment Strategist, and the general company page — plus first-hand accounts on Taro and Blind. Each is quoted as the candidate wrote it, including their typos.
Coding and technical
“Card game question, multiple players with a hand of five ish cards, all players play a card, highest card wins each round. Determine the number of wins for each player.” — SWE New Grad, 13 Aug 2026
“Design a chess game in python” — Software Engineer, New York NY, 17 Jul 2026
“It was a LeetCode medium question.” — Forward Deployed Engineer, New York NY, 15 Jul 2026
“Stock Portfolio – basic array manipulation question” — Software Engineer Intern, New York NY, 24 Jun 2026
“Palantir Employee Matching – build hinge-like app for Palantir employees” — Software Engineer Intern, New York NY, 24 Jun 2026
A Glassdoor reviewer also described being asked to “distribute load in a server given request ids” with the requirement that requests be distributed evenly.
One prep guide reports that Palantir has used Karat, a third-party technical interviewing company, for coding assessments. That claim appears in a single source and is not corroborated by any candidate account collected here, so treat it as unconfirmed rather than established — but if a Karat-branded invitation arrives, it is worth knowing the format in advance.
Decomposition and design
“Design an app for a NYC taxi driver” — Forward Deployed Engineer, New York NY, 28 Jul 2026
Motivation and behavioural
“Why you wanted to be FDE?” — Forward Deployed Engineer, London England, 23 Aug 2026
“Why palantir over any other company?” — Software Engineer, Palo Alto CA, 24 Jun 2026
“Describe a person you find difficult to workwith and how you navigated that, why do you think they acted that way” — Deployment Strategist, Stockholm, 25 Aug 2026
“Whats your major in undergrad” — Deployment Strategist, New York NY, 31 Jul 2026
“Tell me about your background.” — Software Engineer Intern, Washington DC, 19 Jul 2026
A Deployment Strategist candidate in Copenhagen (18 Aug 2026) was asked to walk through a time they took an ambiguous problem with no clear owner and drove it to a concrete outcome, with follow-ups on trade-offs and how results were measured. A Software Engineer in Palo Alto (8 Aug 2026) reported an opening as plain as asking them to say a little about themselves. A March 2026 intern candidate reported questions about their resume and which project they would want to work on.
Clearance
“Can you get clearance for TS needed?” — FDSE Internship, 12 Aug 2026
Palantir works on classified government programmes, so eligibility questions surface early for some roles. Treat this as role-dependent rather than universal.
Does Palantir ask LeetCode questions?
Honestly: sometimes, and the evidence pulls in both directions.
interviewing.io says LeetCode prep “isn’t going to be enough here.” A Blind commenter went the other way: “Expect leetcode hard and a debugging round in java.” And a Forward Deployed Engineer in New York (15 Jul 2026) reported flatly that “It was a LeetCode medium question.”
The defensible reading is that algorithm rounds exist and can be genuinely hard, but they are not the distinguishing feature of this loop. In the candidate accounts collected here, the rounds people described failing were the decomposition round and the behavioural round — not the algorithm screen. That is a small sample and should not be read as a rule, but it points at the pattern in the next section.
The behavioural filter behind many Palantir interview questions
interviewing.io states: “They put a huge emphasis on cultural fit. Behavioral questions will be asked in every interview.”
One Blind candidate’s account makes the cost concrete. They “did well on the three morning rounds, but apparently failed the afternoon HM round which was entirely behavioral.”
Three technical rounds passed. One behavioural round failed. Rejected.
A Taro candidate from New York (15 August 2025) described the evaluation emphasis in similar terms — that what mattered was “how I approached ambiguity, structured my thoughts, and communicated trade-offs,” and that “the real test was in how I debugged and adapted my solution in real time.” They characterised the recruiter screen as more “a thoughtful conversation than a checklist.”
Set that against Michal’s line from Palantir’s own post — “We’re not fishing for a success story. We want to hear about an actual failure.” A rehearsed triumph narrative is the wrong instrument for this loop.
Palantir interview questions by role
Enumerating the separate Glassdoor role pages rather than the headline one changes the picture considerably. The Palantir interview questions reported under each title differ in emphasis, and preparing for the wrong title wastes effort.
Forward Deployed Software Engineer (FDSE)
The most distinctive Palantir role and the one the decomposition round was arguably designed for. Reports cluster around ambiguous design prompts, motivation questions specific to the FDSE title, and — in at least one 2025 account — hands-on data querying. Expect to justify why this role rather than a conventional software engineering seat.
Software Engineer
Closer to a standard loop, with object-oriented design prompts such as building a chess game in Python, plus the same motivation questions. Algorithm rounds are more prominent here than in FDSE reports.
Software Engineer Intern
Lighter technically — array manipulation and small app-design prompts — but the behavioural component is present from the first call. Resume-driven questions about which project you would want to work on recur.
Deployment Strategist
Barely a coding role. The Palantir interview questions here are overwhelmingly behavioural: interpersonal conflict, driving ambiguous work to an outcome, academic background. If you are targeting this title, algorithm practice is close to wasted preparation.
How the rounds compare
| Round | What it tests | Does LeetCode help? |
|---|---|---|
| Technical phone screen | Standard coding, sometimes LeetCode-medium | Yes |
| Decomposition | Structuring an undefined real-world problem; sometimes querying a supplied dataset | Barely |
| Learning | Absorbing an unfamiliar API or concept under time pressure | No |
| Hiring manager / behavioural | Motivation, self-awareness, handling ambiguity and conflict | No |
Practice exercises for the decomposition round
These are constructed practice problems, not real Palantir interview questions. They are not drawn from candidate accounts. They are written to match the reported format of the decomposition round — an ordinary operator, a small dataset, a short deployment horizon — so you can rehearse the shape of the thinking.
Exercise 1. A regional ambulance service gives you 12,000 dispatch records: incident id, call time, dispatch time, arrival time, postcode, outcome code. You have one week before a demo. What do you build, what do you measure, and what do you deliberately leave out?
Exercise 2. A hospital runs two patient record systems that disagree about names, dates of birth and allergies. Design a reconciliation approach. State explicitly what you would refuse to automate and why.
Exercise 3. A port authority wants to reduce container dwell time. You get a week, no historical data, and access to three staff. Decide what to instrument first.
For each, practise saying your reasoning aloud: clarify the goal, name your assumptions, sketch the components, choose a first cut you could ship in a week, then state the trade-off you accepted. That sequence is what Robert’s advice about deconstructing a problem step-by-step actually looks like in the room.
If the prompt arrives with a table attached, expect to reason about it directly. A short aggregation you can talk through beats a perfect query you cannot explain:
# First cut: which pickup zones lose the most driver time?
from collections import defaultdict
idle = defaultdict(float)
for trip in trips:
gap = trip["start_time"] - previous_end[trip["driver_id"]]
if gap > 0:
idle[trip["start_zone"]] += gap
previous_end[trip["driver_id"]] = trip["end_time"]
worst = sorted(idle.items(), key=lambda kv: -kv[1])[:5]
How to prepare for Palantir interview questions, in priority order
Given the evidence above, a defensible order for most candidates facing Palantir interview questions looks like this:
- Rehearse decomposition out loud on vague, unglamorous problems until structuring one feels routine.
- Get comfortable querying and aggregating tabular data by hand, without an IDE to lean on.
- Prepare a genuine failure story, not a disguised success.
- Keep algorithm practice going at medium difficulty — the phone screen is real.
- Have a specific, non-generic answer to why Palantir and why this role. Motivation questions appear in four separate accounts collected here — Glassdoor reports from London (Aug 2026) and Palo Alto (Jun 2026), and two first-hand Taro accounts from 2025.
Frequently asked questions
How many rounds of Palantir interview questions should I expect?+
interviewing.io documents four stages: a 30-minute recruiter call, a one-hour technical phone screen, a three-hour onsite, and a one-hour hiring manager screen. Individual accounts vary — one Palantir employee described meeting four people after a single phone screen — so treat this as the common shape rather than a fixed rule.
Which of the Palantir interview questions come from the decomposition round?+
The decomposition round is where you break an ambiguous, invented real-world problem into parts and propose a first solution, usually with little or no code. Candidates describe it as system design for a made-up scenario, sometimes with a dataset supplied. Reported prompts include designing an app for a New York taxi driver.
Does Palantir ask LeetCode questions?+
Algorithm questions do appear — one candidate reported a LeetCode-medium problem in July 2026, and another warned to expect LeetCode-hard plus a Java debugging round. But interviewing.io, citing conversations with current and former Palantir engineers, states that LeetCode preparation alone is not sufficient. Both things are true at once.
Which Palantir interview questions here are real and which are practice?+
The Palantir interview questions in the reported-questions section are real, quoted from dated Glassdoor, Taro and Blind accounts with role and location attached. The exercises later in the article are clearly labelled as constructed practice and are not drawn from candidate accounts.
Is the behavioural round actually important at Palantir?+
The evidence suggests yes. interviewing.io reports behavioural questions in every interview, and one candidate documented passing three morning technical rounds and then failing an entirely behavioural hiring manager round. That is a single account, but it matches the stated emphasis on cultural fit.
What should I do if a decomposition prompt gives me a dataset?+
Reason about the data directly and narrate it. One candidate reported failing because the round amounted to writing SQL queries with nowhere to run them. Practise talking through aggregations, joins and edge cases without an execution environment.
Where this fits
Studied as a set, the Palantir interview questions above point somewhere specific: this is a loop that rewards structured thinking over memorisation, and it sits alongside other selective US employers that do the same. If you are preparing broadly, our coding interview questions by company hub collects the same treatment for other employers, and the Databricks interview questions guide covers a company whose keyword is similarly split between product trivia and hiring content. For a loop with a comparable hidden-progression coding round, see the Stripe interview process breakdown.
The through-line across all of them: the round that fails people is rarely the one the internet tells you to prepare for.
