ML Job Interviews: The Ultimate Guide – Silvia Sapora

Contents

Introduction

Getting Interviews

Startups vs Big Tech

RSUs vs Stock Options

Interview Structure

Prep: Technical

Prep: Emotional

Prep: Logistics

Negotiation

Decision Making

What I'd Do Differently

Technical Topics

Career · June 2026

ML Job Interviews: The Ultimate Guide

How I found a Research Scientist role after a PhD in Machine Learning

I thought it might be helpful to write about my experience finding a job as a Research Scientist after a PhD in Machine Learning. There's almost zero information out there on this, and I wish someone had written it when I was starting out. I hope this is useful whether you're in the thick of it or just thinking about getting started.

My process was, overall, successful: I received offers from every company I completed interviews with including: DeepMind (which I accepted), Isomorphic Labs, Cohere, Meta, and a startup in stealth. A few caveats to the first claim: Anthropic, Mistral, and TeslaAI got back to me too late and I didn't complete those processes. ReflectionAI, the one genuine rejection: they didn't like me for the RS role but switched me to their Engineering track instead.

Most companies I applied to invited me for interviews, with the exception of: SpaceXAI, Waymo and Wayve. For SpaceXAI, I did let a friend write my application as a joke, but I didn't think it was that bad. For Waymo and Wayve: I love self-driving cars. I applied to Waymo every six months throughout my PhD (internships, then full-time) and never heard back once, despite people in my own lab getting replies. Waymo, if you're reading this, I'm open to forgiveness. My love cover letters were works of art. You can reach me at the email you already have on file, multiple times.

Getting Interviews

Getting interviews is its own challenge, and if you're struggling with it, the levers are the usual ones: more papers, trendier topics, and better internships. You can look at my CV on my website for reference, but briefly: I had 4 first-author (or co-first) papers from my PhD, published at ICLR / NeurIPS / ICML, covering a mix of trendy topics (LLMs, RL) and less fashionable ones (Meta-Learning, Evolution Strategies). I also had an internship at Apple and prior industry experience as a Software Engineer at Meta. If I had to give a rough benchmark: 3+ first-author papers and at least one internship or industry role seems to be the threshold for consistently getting callbacks at top labs.

That said, if you're already getting interviews: more papers will not help you at this point. You need to pass the interviews, and often the people interviewing you won't even look at your CV. So, stop focusing on your research and your papers, and start focusing on interview prep! I understand the feeling of wanting to postpone, but you are never going to feel ready, so just start prepping now .

A few other details worth knowing: cover letters, referrals, cold emails, and LinkedIn/X.

LinkedIn / X: A lot of companies advertise roles here, and for internships in particular it's sometimes the only way to apply. You have to fill out a Google form linked from the post for your application to actually count. Follow the people you admire at the companies you're interested in so you don't miss these.

Referrals: Nice to have, but not necessary. At DeepMind I had a referral for two roles and none for a third, I got invited to interview for one referred role and the unreferred one. At Anthropic, I heard nothing until I discovered an ex-collegue of mine had recently joined and asked him to put in a referral for me. So, worth getting if you can, but don't let the absence of one stop you from applying.

Cold emails: Emailing the hiring manager or someone on the team directly (if you know who they are) is often appreciated. Don't just repeat your CV (you can attach it), use the email to explain why you'd be a good fit for that specific team and what genuinely excites you about their work. For this: at Deepmind I emailed my Hiring Manager, he was happy about it and replied. For another role, I saw the Hiring Manager explicitly encourage people to email him on X… but I could just not be bothered, since I was already going through interviews with the other team. I ended up getting an interview with them despite not sending the email.

Cover letters: Rarely required, but worth doing properly when they are. Please, for the love of everything I hold dear, do not just ask Claude / Gemini / ChatGPT to write it for you. You can absolutely write it yourself and then ask one of them to polish it, that's fine. But try to make some of your personality and excitement shine through.

Companies: Startups vs Big Tech

The summary is: it depends, more than any generic pros/cons list I can write will tell you. But here are the main factors to consider.

Finding startups is harder. There's no central place to look. Ask your labmates, friends, and former colleagues... Word...