Zebra Technologies Firmware Engineer Interview Questions
& Process

They schedule you to come in for a 2.5 hour block of interviews, four interviews total. The first and last interviews aren't technical, rather with managers, the first giving you a really good description of the job. The middle two interviews are more technical in nature, but more along the lines of "describe some projects you've done" rather than "write code on this whiteboard". The last interview is with a manager, more of a "get to know you" kind of talk. All told, the process is relatively painless.

The interview process started with a phone call with the hiring manager. It was pretty basic, asking about myself, how my skills fit the job, the transition from academic to industry code size, comparing C, C++, and C# and my preferences, and considerations for embedded programming. The manager seemed pleased. The onsite interview began with lunch, during which I asked questions that led the interviewer to provide a detailed overview of the role, its function, and the ideal candidate. The subsequent interviews were mostly non-technical, covering my interest in Zebra and embedded systems, discussions about work culture, Zebra's evolution, my strengths and weaknesses. The final interview was technical, asking about concepts like priority inversion, bitfields, and RTOS. I was then presented with a scenario involving loading bits from a bitmap to a printer head via a shift register and asked to explain the process without an RTOS. The interviewer appeared satisfied with my answers. Although the lunch interviewer indicated I might get an offer, the position ultimately went to a more qualified candidate.

I applied through the campus website. There were three rounds of interviews: HR, a technical person, and the manager. The HR person asked about my available date, desired salary, and some company culture stuff like catching up on deadlines. The technical interview involved questions about my resume and wireless communication. I also got some questions from the manager, but I didn't answer them very well, like the one about the 'violate' keyword in C/C++. I didn't get an offer and they let me know about two weeks later.