The recruiter contacted me for a hardware engineer position within the Maps program. Although I have done hardware development for years, I had stepped away for a bit to focus on Signal Integrity, while still working closely with the hardware group. Consequently, I may have been a bit rusty on some specifics, but overall I am fairly comfortable with the process in general.

The first step was a phone screen, which led to an on-site interview. Then, there was silence for over two weeks.

Suddenly, the recruiter responded that they liked my Signal Integrity experience and would like me to come in for another round to interview with their Signal Integrity engineers. Another two weeks or so later, I took more time off work to come in for the second round, which went as smoothly as an interview process possibly could.

And then... after two pings to the recruiter... silence...

It all took well over 2 months. While I don't have a degree from a fancy school that they might like to see, I am an experienced and creative engineer with a very unique experience set.

And in the end, I never heard from the team.

The onsite interview questions were relatively basic, at an undergrad level:

• Basic board development process
• Simple state machine question
• An op-amp circuit (a log amplifier)
• Basic time-domain reflectrometry
• Simple SERDES functionality

If you are rusty, you might be caught a bit off guard, as I was in some cases.

A series of signal integrity questions:

• Simple lossless transmission line example with 0-ohm source and open end
• Diff via optimization
• Basic stackup design overview
• Equipment checks

And so on.