A lot of telephonic rounds as the team is spread across the Europe / World. I applied via employee referral. Cadence has been a primary EDA tool vendor in most the places I have worked previously, and I enjoyed a cordial relationship with their engineers.

The HR contacted me and the telephone interviews followed thereafter. This may vary for other job roles though. I was interviewed by the manager, senior product engineers and other senior managers/engineers.

A product engineering role acts as an interface between Cadence R&D and Application Engineering team and sometimes with Tier 1 customers for a particular Cadence tool/tool suite. Cadence wouldn't have shortlisted me if they doubted my technical abilities - an employee referral also helped me in this regard.

So, most of the questions were related to personality/behavior questions. There were technical questions with regard to the EDA tools and methodologies the role and also deals with questions related to previous educational qualifications and professional experience.