Synapse Product Development Interview Questions
& Process

I found the job opening online and applied. The entire interview process spanned about 1-2 months and was conducted entirely over the phone. The first phone interview was a screening with someone from their mechanical engineering team who had previously gone through their internship program. Each of the two phone interviews lasted about an hour. They started with some questions about my background and personality, then moved on to 3 technical questions. Overall, it was a good interview experience, although I kind of wish they had offered in-person interviews since some things are hard to explain properly over the phone without the right context.

They have a nice hiring process. First, a simple coding exercise with the application. Then, a phone screen about C++, RTOSes, mutexes, and Synapse culture. Next, a coding question on collabedit.com, a simple C linked list problem, followed by discussion. This was followed by a full-loop interview that had three phases. The first phase was with a senior engineer. It involved discussing my work (1/3), coding on a whiteboard (a basic data structure question, then adding a new requirement) (1/3), and discussing my concerns about layoffs and work-life balance (1/3). The second phase was a technical discussion with two engineers about testing, memory management, and their work environments. The third phase was a non-technical discussion with three engineers to see if we could get along and how I present myself. I liked that they focused on intangible aspects and team fit. The whole process took 3.5 weeks.

After I applied, HR contacted me within a week and set up a phone screening a few days later. The application also required a coding sample and I could submit a writing sample. The phone screening was straightforward. I had to solve an online coding problem with a Senior Software Engineer. It involved finding the center of gravity in an array and I used a simple brute force approach. We then talked about optimizing it and its time complexity. They called me the next day to schedule an in-person interview for the following week. I drove to their Seattle office, got a tour, and had a 2-hour interview split into two parts. The first hour was with a team of engineers, including the one from the phone screen. The second hour was with two other engineers who turned out to be project leads. Both parts followed a similar format: conceptual questions on big topics, like drawing layers in a real-time embedded system, and a coding problem. The first coding problem involved 2D array convolution, which I solved easily with a basic method, noting the optimal solution without coding it. The second was a simple stack implementation. They also asked about my past projects and challenges I'd faced, especially those specific to small embedded systems. I interviewed on Wednesday, and HR aimed to give me feedback by Friday. However, due to scheduling conflicts, they called on Monday afternoon with a verbal offer. The whole process took just under 3 weeks.

So the first round was a 30-min phone call with the hiring manager. It was pretty chill, mostly just chatting about my background and what the job is about. They asked a couple of basic technical questions about common active electrical components to check my fundamentals. Naturally, I got to ask questions too. The second interview was a week later, a 1-hour video call with two engineers from the team. We spent most of the time looking at some of my project portfolio and they hit me with technical questions about how things worked and how I could make improvements. It was a good time. I got the offer soon after.