Seagate Technology Firmware Engineer Interview Questions
& Process
Real candidates share what happened, how many rounds they had,
and how the experience turned out.
Based on 32 interview experiences · FREE TO READ
Candidate interview experiences
First-hand accounts from people who interviewed at Seagate Technology.
Seagate Technology
Firmware Engineer
Entry Easy Positive experience Accept offer 6 rounds
Interview process
Recruiter call Phone screen Technical screen Onsite Take home
Interview formats
Technical Behavioral Coding
First, I had a recruiter call for a basic phone screening. Then, I had a call with a Sr. Manager who asked about Arrays vs Linked Lists, binary tree advantages, and some basic OS questions like process scheduling and priority inversion, plus other non-technical things. About a week and a half later, I had an onsite with Senior Managers and Directors. They were really nice and kept it pretty laid back, just wanting to get to know me and expecting honest answers. The onsite had 2 technical rounds focusing on basic OS, debugging, and computer architecture, followed by lunch. After lunch, there were 2 behavioral rounds with directors and senior managers. Finally, there was a C test with questions on ISR, storage classes, function pointers, arrays, structs/unions, preprocessor directives, and basic bit manipulation. It felt like the technical part was only about 1/4 of the whole process.
Confirmed questions2 questions
- Could you explain how to traverse a binary tree?
- I have an unexpected technical question related to a project on your resume.
Seagate Technology
Firmware Engineer
Mid Average Negative experience No offer 3 rounds
Interview process
Recruiter call Phone screen Onsite
Interview formats
Technical Coding Behavioral
Got a recruiter call asking about my firmware background, salary needs, and where I'm located. The hiring manager called next, doing a 30-minute technical chat about basic OS stuff. Then, they flew me out to Shakopee, MN for a super long on-site interview that lasted from 10 am to 5 pm. I had to wait ages for a cab afterwards. Even though I aced all the technical questions from the 14 people who interviewed me, they rejected me without giving a reason. A complete waste of time, but hey, I got offers from Qualcomm and Intel later, so maybe it worked out.
Confirmed questions2 questions
- A C programming test was given.
- Lots of questions about Operating Systems, Algorithms, and Computer Architecture were asked.
Seagate Technology
Firmware Engineer Intern
Intern Easy Positive experience Accept offer 9 rounds
Interview process
Recruiter call Technical screen Onsite Background check Offer
Interview formats
Technical Coding Behavioral
I applied and got the interview about 2-3 days later. The whole thing took about 4 hours. I talked to seven people from the department and two current co-op students, and each chat was about half an hour. It was a really positive experience, everyone was super nice. About half the time was spent on skill tests, and the other half was like a company tour and explaining what they do. One of the interviewers even took me to lunch, which was paid for by the company.
Confirmed questions3 questions
- Can you write a function by hand that takes an error code and returns the right message, using a provided table of codes and messages?
- Please write out the truth tables for 'and', 'xor', and 'exclusive or'.
- I also had a practice problem on error codes where I needed to use boolean algebra to figure out the expected results.
Seagate Technology Firmware Engineer Interview Questions
Quoted word for word from Seagate Technology interview reports.
“Write a function to print Pascal's triangle given the number of rows as input. For example, if the input is 5, the output should be: [1] [1, 1] [1, 2, 1] [1, 3, 3, 1] [1, 4, 6, 4, 1]”
Read reports →“Given two strings, can you determine if they are anagrams?”
Read reports →“What's the worst thing firmware can do to reduce hard drive performance?”
Read reports →“What are the advantages of using a singly linked list compared to a doubly linked list?”
Read reports →“Can you refactor this C code to use less memory? int nFirstOne =1, nSecondOne=2; int nTemp = nFirstOne; nFirstOne = nSecondOne; nSecondOne = nTemp;”
Read report →“What would be the output of this C code?”
Read report →“Can you write a program to print a square diamond of '*' characters, given an odd integer for the width?”
Read report →“Could you write a C program to display the first 10 prime numbers?”
Read report →“Can you write a function by hand that takes an error code and returns the right message, using a provided table of codes and messages?”
Read report →Formats, difficulty and experience
Across all 32 Seagate Technology interview reports.