I was interviewed for contracting for Java developer position a year back. People are cool, lot of Financial questions, normal Java developer may not get through it. As I am Financial savy person I could do it. .. In general interviews at Black Rock San Francisco are tough. I was selected and worked for 9 months, because of budget cuts could not renew or convert as FT. Now team called me back for FT position, since they know me, interview was easy sail. HR interview and processing is not so common as I expected. I have asked my expected salary, they came up with the package with same figure (but bonus and benefits included in that), which is very uncommon in IT industry. You usually ask for a salary and bonus on top of the salary. Offer was not that great, just median salary of San Francisco Bay Area, which is definitely not expected from top notch financial company. Benefits are also not par with financial industry, only 50 pc match of 401k and 3 years vesting time, and max of 5k limit of matching. Only good benefit is unlimited sick time, which disappeared in lot of companies already. Having 10 + years of programming experience, BlackRock offered only median salary of Bay Area.