Cisco | Software Engineer 1 | Bangalore | Jan 2021

My Interview Experience at Cisco for Software Engineer 1

I applied for the Software Engineer 1 position at Cisco through their company portal. Shortly after, I received a call from HR to schedule interviews. I requested a few days to prepare, and the interviews were set for about 4-5 days later.

Round 1: Technical (1 hour)

This round focused primarily on data structures and algorithms, along with core computer science fundamentals. I was asked to:

• Count the total number of nodes in a binary tree.
• Find the number of leaf nodes in a binary tree.

Additionally, the interviewer posed questions on OS internals, covering topics like mutexes, semaphores, threads, heap, and stack. There were also questions on bit manipulation, networking concepts (routers, packets, switches), and endianness (big and little).

Round 2: Technical (1 hour)

The second technical round delved deeper into C programming and problem-solving. Key questions included:

• How to find the middle element in a Linked List.
• How I would design a generic structure in C that could hold any data type.

This round also featured several questions on C covering memory allocations, static and global variables, structure padding, and macros. Tricky bit manipulation problems were discussed, emphasizing the importance of strong basics. Further theoretical questions on mutexes, semaphores, and Inter Process Communication were also part of this round.

Round 3: Hiring Manager (30 minutes)

This was a standard hiring manager discussion. I was asked typical behavioral questions such as my motivations for wanting to switch companies, specifically why I was interested in Cisco, and how I envisioned myself fitting into the Software Engineer 1 role.