Qualcomm Interview Questions
& Process

We'll kick things off with a quick 30-minute chat with the recruiter to go over the basics, like if you're a good fit, the schedule, and what you're looking for salary-wise. Then, we've got two technical rounds, each about an hour. The first is with the hiring manager or an engineer, where we'll really dig into your Python, Django, and REST API skills, doing some coding and talking about architecture. The second technical round is with a senior colleague or architect, focusing on designing complex systems, dealing with tricky edge cases, making things run fast, and some deeper behavioral questions where you'll use the STAR method. If all that goes well, there might be a final round with the Director or VP to chat about the bigger picture, how you'd fit into the team, and your thoughts on high-level tech strategy.

So, the Qualcomm Research Intern interview had two main parts. First, there was a technical chat with a Senior Engineer, mainly to check my ML/DL knowledge, like explaining concepts and thinking through them. We talked about basic ML/DL stuff – training, loss functions, optimization, overfitting/underfitting, and general architecture. It was interactive but chill, just to see if I knew my stuff and could talk about it. Then, the second part was with the Hiring Manager. This one was more about research. They wanted to hear about my previous research – what I worked on, why it was important, my methods, experiments, and what I learned. It was all about my thinking and responsibility: my choices, how I dealt with surprises, and how I adjusted. They also asked about what research I want to do next and if it fits with what the team is doing. Basically, it was to see if I have a solid research story and if my interests line up with the team's goals for an internship.

About a month after I applied, I got an email for a technical interview with one of their engineers. It was a video call lasting about 1 hour and 15 minutes. After that, there was an in-person meeting at the office which included technical tests, like a LeetCode exercise, followed by an interview with Human Resources. They gave a quick presentation about the company and the team, then asked technical questions. Some explanations involved screen sharing, but no direct coding was done during this part.

First, I was contacted by a manager and we connected well. Then, I met with a director from an adjacent FP&A team, who mentioned I seemed like a great fit. After that, I met with the HM and felt it went well. I then took an Excel assessment that was timed for 40 minutes. Honestly, it was kinda bs, I got caught up on a question that required the “What-if” feature. The wording on a question about the for was nonsense. Otherwise, I did everything perfectly. Then I was ghosted, even after following up with the recruiter and HM.