I applied for the job role "System Integration Lead" at Apple Bangalore in January 2024. After almost one month, the HR contacted me via email, stating that my profile had been shortlisted and they wished to proceed with interviews.

I attended a total of 11 rounds of interviews: 2 screening, 6 technical, and 3 leadership. Additionally, I had 4 discussions with HR over video conference. Since all recruiters were based in the US, my interviews were scheduled late at night according to Indian time.

The entire process took two and a half months. Five weeks ago, the HR informed me: "The feedback is overwhelming from all interviewers. At Apple, this kind of feedback is very rare. The hiring manager is very positive about you. However, we have finalized one more candidate along with you, who is an internal candidate. The only differences between you both are that the internal candidate has Apple experience, which you don't have, and he has 15 years of overall experience where you have 11. Now, the senior director will make the final decision."

Two weeks ago, the HR had a approximately 30-second video conference call to deliver the verdict, stating they were going with the internal candidate, who would be moving from Apple US to Apple India.

I became very upset, depressed, devastated, and frustrated. I lost my confidence.

Could not share exact questions.

Screen - 1 Few simple questions on SoC/System Power/Thermal/Battery Validation.

Screen - 2 All the SoC/hardware related questions. Went through the pseudocode well for a Linked List traversal problem statement.

Tech - 1 SoC/hardware domain and coding round.

Tech - 2 All the SoC/hardware domain related questions. Went through the pseudocode well for swapping of values within a list of long integers problem statement.

Tech - 3 Questions on Platform Thermal Management.

Tech - 4 Platform level thermal management from a software perspective.

Tech - 5 System level power management flows.

Lead - 1 I was informed that some coding skills were required since a small set of code changes might be needed to fix things locally.

Lead - 2 Few technical questions were asked, and I answered those in a very informative manner.

Lead - 3 Best leadership round I have had with a Senior Director.

Lead - 4 Though it was a purely technical round on power/thermal management flows.