Hiring: The time between being contacted for the first time and receiving a final decision regarding an offer/rejection was about one month. During this time were phone, Skype, and in-person interviews.

Interviews: There were three interviews.

The first one was a phone-interview with one of the HR representatives, and also the first time I was contacted by Cadence. They asked general questions such as: "Where did you hear about Cadence?", "Why would you like to work here?", "What sort of work/hobbies have you done that have given you experience that can be used at Cadence".

The second interview was a set of 3 Skype video-interviews with people from the team I would be working with. These were 30-minute back-to-back interviews. The questions here were more technical-oriented, but appropriate for Skype. I.e., nothing that required me to draw or type out code. All answerable verbally.

The third and interview was an in-person interview. I flew out from another state, and Cadence provided all the logistics for getting there (Plane tickets, rental, hotel. They did a fantastic job). This interview lasted from about 9:00AM to 3:00PM. Lunch was included. I spoke with several different people over the course of this session, and about 3/4ths of questions were technical. Because of the highly-visual nature of what Cadence does (EDA), the majority of these questions were about 2D/Computational Geometry and working through problems related to it.

Overall, the interviews were very pleasant. I did not feel rushed during the technical parts.

Tips for the Reader:

Phone Interview: They may end up calling first before contacting via email: be able to genuinely answer the questions mentioned above.

Skype Interview: Business-casual is fine. Now is the time to screen-share and show any programming projects/demos (for ~5 minutes).

In-Person Interview: There were some basic coding exercises that I had to do relating to syntax for C/C++. Most of the technical interviewing was about solving problems and seeing how I approached them. I enjoyed using a whiteboard to draw out the various geometrical problems and work through them. I was offered the chance to explain one of my own projects through code, but it was just easier to draw out how it worked.

Fantastic process overall.

This was a geometry problem that I had never seen or thought of before.