The process began with an initial phone screen and 6 on-site interviews.

The phone interview focused on Systems. I was asked about Threads/Processes, Synchronization Primitives, Parallelization, and Distributed Systems. The phone screen ended with networking concepts (VLANs and MPLS).

The on-site interviews focused on Networking, Systems, and programming (C language). Every concept in the Operating Systems book was covered. The interviewers were very interested in knowing the design decisions I made while implementing system-level projects.

Networking-related questions covered:

• VLANs
• MPLS
• VPNs
• ARP
• STP
• BGP
• OSPF
• VRRP

The fundamental concepts behind the protocols were tested.

I was asked to write 3 programs: string-based, bit manipulation, and linked list-based.

I was asked time and again about the design decisions: Why use one concept and not another?

The interviewers were really interested to know whether I understood the fundamental concepts.