Iridium Satellite Software Engineer Interview Questions
& Process

So this was for an interview I did earlier this year. They interview like 7-8 people for each position. They put you through about 3-5 interviews and then send you a generic email at the end when they decide to go with someone else. First interview was a 20 min video call with the recruiter where they go over the role and explain that you will have to work in person. Second interview was with a dev and an engineering manager where they ask behavioral questions. During this one the dev seemed to be interviewing me but also implicitly complaining about the lack of innovation / stuffiness / outdated & old technologies and dev processes being used there. Third interview was a coding interview with the same dev and manager from the second interview where they test your knowledge of OOP. Engineering manager seemed engaged and interested, the dev seemed like he wanted to hurry it up, he kept asking me how long it was going to take me to finish. To sum it up - the interview process was very dull and left a lot to be desired. Which probably foreshadows what it would be like to actually work there.

I got past the initial technical interview but decided the role wasn't the right fit. I chatted with three really chill people from the Simulations & Automation team. The talk was mostly casual, covering OOP, architectural design choices like microservices versus lambdas, and some Python specifics. I had initially applied to a few similar-looking jobs, and it turned out I'd mixed them up, which came up on my first pre-screen call. The recruiter was cool about it and pointed me to a different opening. There seemed to be a slight mismatch later on between the job ad and what the manager described, though. It still feels like a great company with a cool team doing interesting work.

It was a conversational interview with an engineering team manager. They asked some behavioral questions and we discussed my tech stack experience. Also asked what I know about the company and gave me a chance to talk about projects I've worked on or created. I also had the opportunity to ask the interviewer questions.