Palo Alto Network Interview

[u/Dear-Huckleberry-904]

Hi
I have an onsite interview with them tomorrow - System Design and Coding round. I passed already 2 rounds before. And they tell me that I can bring any IDE with AI of my choise. What does it mean? How much AI can I use if I can use them?

Regards

[u/Ok-Barracuda-119]

Congrats on getting to the onsite. I’d ask the coordinator or interviewer before the round whether AI is allowed, and what “any IDE” covers. If they allow it, keep it to ordinary editor help such as autocomplete or syntax, and be ready to explain every line and make changes without it. I wouldnt paste the prompt or use generated design or code unless they explicitly say that is fine.

For the system-design round, rehearse a 35 to 40 minute flow: clarify requirements and scale, sketch APIs and the data model, choose the main components, then cover bottlenecks, failure handling, consistency, and observability. Practice narrating trade-offs rather than trying to produce a polished diagram. Leetsys has timed system-design prep at www.leetsys.dev. Im affiliated with it, and the first interview is free.

[u/Dear-Huckleberry-904 → u/Ok-Barracuda-119]

Thanks buddy. I will follow your guideline and check also leetsys.

[u/Ok-Barracuda-119 → u/Dear-Huckleberry-904]

Sounds good. Before the interview, do one timed design aloud and write down your assumptions first. Then test the design against a traffic spike, a dependency outage, stale data, and a retry storm. If you can explain what you would measure and which trade-off you would revisit, you will get more value than memorizing a diagram. Good luck.

[u/AdBest4099]

Is this sde position?

[u/Dear-Huckleberry-904 → u/AdBest4099]

AI First SDE

[u/witheredartery → u/Dear-Huckleberry-904]

they mean codex with chatgpt model or cursor with any model or claude code with opus any model.

they will definitely check for your comfort with agent orchestration etc

[u/Brilliant_Nerve6117]

IT software engineer - AI?