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Applications Support Engineer Interview Experience

July 11, 2016
Positive ExperienceGot Offer

Process

Video Interview: Very easy, available on Glassdoor.

HackerRank Coding Challenge: Should be easy if you know MATLAB and C/C++.

Telephonic Technical Interview: Should be very easy for Computer Science people.

Awaiting further rounds...

Questions

Telephonic Interview:

Control Systems:

  1. What are feedback, feedforward, and open-loop systems?
  2. What is PID control, and why is derivative control added?
  3. Bode plot: How to determine gain and phase margin?
  4. Determine whether a state-space model is controllable. (A very easy 2nd-order system was given.)
  5. How to determine the poles of a state-space system?

C/C++:

Numerous questions involved determining the output of programs using classes, focusing on whether they would compile. Key areas included:

  • Operator overloading
  • Virtual functions
  • Constructors

A sample is given below (determine whether it will compile):

cpp class xyz { // somethings here };

int main() { xyz* s1 = new xyz(100); xyz s2 = *s1; s2.function(); delete s1; }

(Very easy for computer science professionals.)

MATLAB:

  1. Given a = [1 2 3 4] and scale = [10 20 30 40], how would you scale each element of a? Ans: a .* scale

  2. Given a = [1 2 3; 4 5 6; 7 8 9], will a .* scale work? No, MATLAB will give an error.

  3. Can you define a function called filter.m? Ans: No, because filter() is a pre-existing MATLAB function. What if filter is in the current folder? You still should not do that, because filter() will always resolve to MATLAB's built-in function.

  4. Logical indexing question.

(It should be pretty easy.)

MATH:

  1. Given velocity v(t), find acceleration a(t) and displacement d(t). (Simple integral and derivative.)
  2. Question on the rank of a matrix. A matrix was given, and the rank was asked.
  3. What is the characteristic equation of a matrix? A matrix was given, and the equation was to be found.
  4. When is a matrix invertible? A matrix was given.
  5. Given v1 = i - j and v2 = k, find a vector perpendicular to v1 and v2. (Use the cross product.)

(Should be simple...)

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Interview Statistics

The following metrics were computed from 957 interview experiences for the MathWorks Applications Support Engineer role in United States.

Success Rate

14%
Pass Rate

MathWorks's interview process for their Applications Support Engineer roles in the United States is extremely selective, failing the vast majority of engineers.

Experience Rating

Positive47%
Neutral44%
Negative9%

Candidates reported having very good feelings for MathWorks's Applications Support Engineer interview process in United States.

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