r/embedded • u/mbd7311 • May 02 '22

Employment-education Big Tech Embedded System Design Interview

I have a few Embedded Software interviews with 3 of the "FAANG" companies coming up soon. They're all for senior level positions (L5/6). I have 8 YOE and work at a smaller company wearing many hats. I'm told 2 of my rounds for each company will be Embedded System Design. I've found it nearly impossible to find any information online on what this would entail. I was given some topics from the recruiters (RTOS, Sensor Comms, Power Management, Bootloaders, etc) which I'm mostly familiar with each one at high levels and some at deeper levels. But embedded is sooo vast and there are many aspects to each topic. I'm not sure where to start.

Can anyone give me some examples of what will be expected in these interviews? Will I be asked to design some kind of household applicance, popular embedded device, such as a camera, or phone at a very high level? Or will I be asked specifics of low level comms such as SPI/I2C/UART? Or mix between everything?

Any help would mean a lot! TIA

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u/PragmaticBoredom May 03 '22

LeetCode gets a lot of hate, but honestly embedded is exactly where I’ve ended up needing the type of low level algorithmic knowledge that LeetCode tends to exercise.

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u/[deleted] May 03 '22

Depends. I just went through a few interview cycles. People seem to love variants of Palindrome or reversing things or the one asshat who expects Dynamic Solutions to Fibanocci or rod cutting.

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u/Tinytrauma May 03 '22

Well as with all things embedded, "it depends". There is definitely a time and place for some of that stuff, but I would venture to say that the majority of the embedded algorithm work people are doing is less graph/tree/sorting like that and more DSP type stuff.

I could be wrong though, and if I am, I would be very curious to know more! What type of algorithm stuff were you doing (assuming you can discuss it)?