Verizon SDE 2 Embedded Software Developer Interview Experience || Selected

My interview journey for the SDE 2 Embedded Software Developer role at Verizon was a comprehensive and insightful experience, ultimately leading to an offer.

Round 1: Technical Interview (1 hour)
This round began with my brief introduction, detailing my background, experience, and the projects I've worked on. The interviewer then delved into a series of technical questions, primarily focusing on C++ fundamentals and memory management.
Questions included: What is a pointer and why do we use them? How are memory allocated statically in the stack versus dynamically in the heap? What is the size of a pointer in a 64-bit architecture? (I answered: 8 bytes). There was a snippet to analyze: char* a; void* b; cout << sizeof(a) << " " << sizeof(b) << endl;, for which the output was 8 8. I was asked to write a program to reverse the digits in a number. Further questions explored multithreading concepts like "What is a thread?" and "What is a mutex?". We also discussed advanced C++ features such as "How do you declare a pointer to a function?", "What are unique pointers and shared pointers?", and I was asked to "Create an array pointer of size 100 using a unique pointer" (Answer: std::unique_ptr<int[]> arr = std::make_unique<int[]>(100);). Other topics included "What is a reference?", "What is the auto keyword?", "What is an interface?", "What is lambda capture?", and "Do arithmetic operations happen on a void pointer?" (Answer: No). The interviewer also assessed my leadership skills by asking about past experiences leading a team. I was advised to be ready to code solutions for the questions asked.

Round 2: Technical + Behavioral Interview
This round started with an in-depth discussion about my past projects and the technologies I utilized. Following this, I tackled coding questions. I was asked to "Delete a node from the middle, head, and tail of a linked list" and to "Implement the KMP algorithm for string pattern matching", including a discussion on brute-force, improved versions, and their time/space complexities.
Scenario-based questions were a significant part of this round: I demonstrated how to "Create a char array of size 200 in both C and C++ (static and dynamic allocation)" (Answer: C: char arr[200];, char* arr = (char*)malloc(200 * sizeof(char));; C++: char arr[200];, char* arr = new char[200];). A detailed discussion ensued on "Why do we use delete[] for arrays, but free(ch) in C? Does delete internally use free?" (Answer: delete[] ensures proper destructor calls in C++ arrays, while free() is for C; delete internally calls free() after destructors). I was also posed a system design scenario: "If two threads t1 and t2 are running, and your manager asks you to pass data from t1 to t2, how will you do it?" (Answer: Using shared variables, std::promise, and std::future). Finally, we discussed "What happens if your system crashes? What could be the possible reasons? How can you avoid it?" (Answer: Reasons include buffer overflow, dangling pointers, memory leaks; avoidance through proper memory management, smart pointers, bounds checking, and debugging). I concluded this round by asking the interviewer some questions.

Round 3: HR Interview
The final round was a standard HR interview, covering behavioral questions and discussions regarding salary expectations, roles, and responsibilities.