Staff Software Engineer | Qualcomm | Interview Experience | Offer
Summary
I completed a multi‑round interview process at Qualcomm for a Staff Software Engineer role, focusing on system design and AI/ML, and received an offer after two weeks.
Full Experience
Background
YOE: 12 Years Experienced: Backend Development Current Organization: Top Tier Service Based, Prior associated with top Investment Banking Organization Current Role: Senior Software Engineer (last 6 years) Offered Role: Staff Software Engineer Technology: Java MS Distributed System + AI/ML
Application Got referral and applied multiple positions.
Interview Experience Solved 550+ Leetcode problems. But no DSA question asked. The interview were completely on System Designs (Distributed + AI/ML).
Due to NDA, providing similar questions, not the exact questions.
Round‑1 1st Part - Heavy on Database side.
- Find the employees with 2nd highest salary from each department. Related followup.
- Design schema of Hospital management system. Building the relationships across the tables.
- Indexing and Query optimizations
- Entity design with Java
2nd part - AI/ML
- Questions on the recent AI project, designs, tradeoffs
- LangGraph, LangChain, Nodes, Tools
- CNN
- Design a pdf (input) to pdf(output) shortening application based on user query using RAG.
Round‑2 1st Part
- Design a report generation application where user can provide the input the report parameters. One report generation may call external API, lookup into DB with millions of records.
- A lot of follow‑up questions. Understanding the functional and non‑functional requirements. Finding the Limitations, resiliency, tradeoffs are critical.
- AI/ML - Tool, Skills, Image embeddings
2nd‑Part
- Designing a high throughput and highly available system. Again understanding the failure, retry, resiliency, multi cloud architecture.
Round‑3 Completely on AI/ML with a complex problem statement
- Building a RAG based prediction system where input documents are python code.
- Graph RAG, Harness
- Current AI/ML Project and detailed architecture
Hiring Manager Round Detailed discussion about my current project. Architecture. Understanding of AI/ML systems. Overall the decision was very good with Hiring manager.
Got the offer after 2 weeks.
Can't share the compensation details.
Preparations Took LC subscription for 1 year. Practicing on daily basis. Appearing mock OA in LeetCode for FAANG. Have System Design subscription from 'Design Gurus'. Discussing the system design with Peers are much helpful.
Failed Attempts
- VISA - Cleared OA but failed in the interview where I have solved both the DSA problem but could not optimised one of them.
- LSEG - Cleared OA but failed in System design with high throughput banking system for transaction management
- Microsoft - Senior Consultant role - heavily on AI/ML side. Failed in designing a system where hallucination is the key concern. This interview helped me understanding the AI/ML systems more and changing the preparation strategy.
- Google - Senior Applied AI/ML Engineer - Position closed after 2 rounds. Had a connect and good discussion with the recruiter later on.
Now is the time to say Thank You to this amazing community.
There have been so many discussions, experiences and insights shared here that helped me grow and continuously update my preparation strategy. I'll be happy if my journey and this post can help anyone in their preparation or career journey.
Wishing everyone the very best in their journey. Keep learning, keep growing!
Interview Questions (5)
Find Employees with 2nd Highest Salary per Department
Write a query to find the employees who have the second highest salary within each department, and discuss any follow‑up scenarios related to ranking or ties.
Hospital Management System Schema Design
Design the database schema for a hospital management system, defining tables and relationships across entities such as patients, doctors, appointments, treatments, and billing.
Report Generation Application Design
Design a report generation application where a user provides report parameters. The system may call external APIs and look up data from a database containing millions of records, while handling scalability, performance, and reliability concerns.
High‑Throughput Highly‑Available System Design
Design a high‑throughput, highly‑available system that operates across multiple clouds. Discuss failure handling, retry mechanisms, resiliency strategies, and how to achieve low latency under heavy load.
RAG‑Based Prediction System for Python Code
Design a Retrieval‑Augmented Generation (RAG) based prediction system where input documents are Python code files. Explain how you would ingest the code, generate embeddings, retrieve relevant context, and produce predictions.
Preparation Tips
Took LC subscription for 1 year. Practicing on daily basis. Appearing mock OA in LeetCode for FAANG. Have System Design subscription from 'Design Gurus'. Discussing the system design with peers was very helpful.