A head hunter approached me about the opportunity, we had a call to talk about it. Then he forwarded my CV to the company which asked to schedule an interview. The first step was a tech interview with an engineer from the team, a couple of background and tech questions about multiple areas. The next step was an interview with the team lead, this had some tech questions and coding exercises. The following one was an interview with the company CEO. After that, they asked for 2 references which they asked some more questions. The last step was another round with the CEO with an offer for a temporary contract, after trying to negotiate the salary, the CEO decided to move from hiring to a completely independent contractor based on grants and projects, even though I have mentioned that I did not feel comfortable to start working on a grant without deeper knowledge of the company protocol and that I would prefer to start as an employee and maybe move to a grant in the future the CEO wasn't interested in that option anymore. That felt odd, since they were hiring people but in the end of the process proposing independent work (no attachment to the company) by grants.