Estimate the number of gas stations in the United States, then tell me how you'd verify it with data.
The classic market-sizing question with Palantir's twist: the estimate is the warm-up, and the scored move is the verification plan. Two independent decompositions, a cross-check, and the datasets that settle it.
Updated Aug 2026 · Grounded in real Forward Deployed Engineer interview loops and written to a senior-engineer editorial bar.
The classic market-sizing question with Palantir's twist: the estimate is the warm-up, and the scored move is the verification plan. Two independent decompositions, a cross-check, and the datasets that settle it.
Lead with where the obvious approach breaks, because that is the judgment they are screening for — most candidates jump straight to the happy path and lose the room.
Then walk the failure back through the pipeline in order, naming the one metric the customer's exec sponsor actually cares about before you propose the fix.
