Recruitment Stories - Saif's Experience at Tiger IT Bangladesh Ltd.

Saif Mahmud is currently working as a Software Engineer at Tiger IT Bangladesh Ltd., while also continuing his research work at AGenCy Lab, Independent University Bangladesh. He completed his Bachelor’s degree from the Department of Computer Science & Engineering, University of Dhaka. From the beginning of his undergraduate studies, Saif was committed to research activities. Through hard work, he published his research at the 24th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence - ECAI 2020, one of the highest-ranked conferences for Machine Learning.

In this article, I will share Saif’s experience of landing a job at Tiger IT Bangladesh Ltd. to provide insights for someone preparing to apply to the company.

Saif applied to the company through one of his classmates, who was working at Tiger IT at the time. The classmate forwarded his resume and recommended him. Soon after, Saif was notified of his selection.

Tiger IT follows a team-wise recruitment policy, and Saif applied to the Machine Learning R&D team. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, there was no in-person written test or interview. Saif participated in a 3-hour online interview conducted through Zoom, led by Senior Engineers of the team. The interview consisted of three main components.

Part - 1: Computer Science and Programming Basics

During the interview, Saif was asked questions related to operating systems basics such as threads and multiprocess, as well as Python-specific programming concepts, including list comprehension, generators, and decorators. Additionally, the interviewers posed an initial question followed by multiple scenario-specific supplementary questions.

Part - 2: Problem Solving Test

The interviewers shared a Google Doc with Saif that contained six programming problems related to data structures and algorithms, specifically graph theory and greedy techniques. They gave Saif the option to solve the problems in any programming language he preferred, and he chose Python.

During the coding process, Saif turned on screen sharing, allowing the interviewers to assess his solution approach. They asked multiple supplementary questions about the solution strategy and requested certain modifications that Saif had to implement immediately.

Part - 3: Machine Learning Theory and Applications

During the interview, Saif was asked about several topics, including:

• Core linear algebra concepts, such as singular value decomposition, linear transformations, and the geometric perspective of eigenvalues
• Machine learning theory, such as the information-theoretic concept of cross-entropy loss, expected values, and conditional probabilities
• Application-related topics, such as PyTorch concepts and optimizers

In addition to these topics, the interviewers also asked about Saif’s research publications.

Saif’s strong performance in the interview can be attributed to his research and problem-solving experience, as well as his preparation. He spent time practicing programming problems on platforms like LeetCode and HackerRank, and also read machine learning blogs and textbooks to prepare.

Special thanks to Saif Mahmud for taking out the time to share his recruitment experience with me. If you have any queries, feel free to contact him at saif.dhrubo@gmail.com