Xilinx General Intern Interview Questions
& Process

So I got an email to set up a quick 10 minute chat with the recruiter. They just wanted to go over the job details and hear a bit about me. After that, about a week later, I had an hour-long technical interview. It was mostly software stuff, but also some questions about how I work. For the software questions, they asked about algorithms I know and the best ways to do things like sorting and searching.

This was an Internship position at Hyderabad, India. First, there was a phone interview with simple questions like reversing a string, pointer and array concepts, and implementing an operation using logic gates. Then, I was called for an on-site interview. There were three interviewers and an HR person overseeing the process. They mainly looked for confidence in the concepts mentioned on the resume. It seemed they were looking for a hardware programmer/tester but were willing to hire someone without prior knowledge as they planned to train the candidate. They asked about the Nyquist Theorem, Finite State Machine, and topics from my resume. One interviewer was a bit strict and asked for the derivations of the Fourier Transform, which I couldn't fully recall. He asked another question I didn't know, and I realized I had bombed the interview. I didn't know if there were more stages since I got rejected.

I applied online for the signal integrity intern role. Even though my background is in embedded systems, the interviews focused on my resume projects and general background. They asked questions like what my ideal job would be and why manhole covers are round. They also wanted to check my grasp of engineering electromagnetics to assess my potential usefulness.