Tesla

Software Engineer (Internship) Interview Experience - Palo Alto, California

February 1, 2023

Neutral ExperienceNo Offer

Process

Total 3 rounds, 1 hour each.

HR reach out
Engineer
Engineer
Hiring Manager

HR moves on very quickly, about 1-2 days to get results for each round.

Questions

Total 3 rounds, 1 hour each:

LeetCode + resume digging
Robotics + resume digging + deep learning
Implement low-level memory

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Interview Statistics

The following metrics were computed from 8 interview experiences for the Tesla Software Engineer (Internship) role in Palo Alto, California.

Success Rate

38%

Pass Rate

Tesla's interview process for their Software Engineer (Internship) roles in Palo Alto, California is fairly selective, failing a large portion of engineers who go through it.

Experience Rating

Positive50%

Neutral50%

Negative0%

Candidates reported having very good feelings for Tesla's Software Engineer (Internship) interview process in Palo Alto, California.

Tesla Work Experiences

Enjoyed my time here

Test Engineer Intern • Former Employee

Palo Alto, California, United States

Pros: Lots of smart people that are good to work with.

Cons: I don’t have anything to put here, as I really enjoyed my time in this company.

Enjoyed my time here

Test Engineer Intern • Former Employee

Palo Alto, California, United States

Pros: Lots of smart people that are good to work with.

Cons: I don’t have anything to put here, as I really enjoyed my time in this company.

Constant Action With Super Smart People

Battery Engineering • Current Employee

Palo Alto, California, United States

Pros: The learning you'll gain in such a short time is incredible. You're being trained throughout the whole internship. The company culture is a huge open space with great ease of communication. If you do any programming work, you're going to be working a lot, but other internships that rely on a team will have you work only as long as the team, as you can imagine. Free cereal and juice is great.

Cons: Pay is known to be pretty weak comparatively. Just know you're not coming here for the pay at all, otherwise you won't enjoy your time.

Constant Action With Super Smart People

Battery Engineering • Current Employee

Palo Alto, California, United States

Pros: The learning you'll gain in such a short time is incredible. You're being trained throughout the whole internship. The company culture is a huge open space with great ease of communication. If you do any programming work, you're going to be working a lot, but other internships that rely on a team will have you work only as long as the team, as you can imagine. Free cereal and juice is great.

Cons: Pay is known to be pretty weak comparatively. Just know you're not coming here for the pay at all, otherwise you won't enjoy your time.

Great, depending on your priorities

Senior Mechanical Engineer • Current Employee

Palo Alto, California, United States

Pros: Great technical growth, smart people to learn from, culture & work-life balance greatly defined by team & manager.

Cons: Workload can be high at times. Projects may get deprioritized & cancelled on short notice. Fear of layoffs. Public image & media coverage of the company/leadership can affect morale.

Great, depending on your priorities

Senior Mechanical Engineer • Current Employee

Palo Alto, California, United States

Pros: Great technical growth, smart people to learn from, culture & work-life balance greatly defined by team & manager.

Cons: Workload can be high at times. Projects may get deprioritized & cancelled on short notice. Fear of layoffs. Public image & media coverage of the company/leadership can affect morale.

Enjoyed my time here

Test Engineer Intern • Former Employee

Palo Alto, California, United States

Pros: Lots of smart people that are good to work with.

Cons: I don’t have anything to put here, as I really enjoyed my time in this company.

5.0
Enjoyed my time here
Test Engineer Intern • Former Employee
Palo Alto, California, United States
June 30, 2024
Pros: Lots of smart people that are good to work with.
Cons: I don’t have anything to put here, as I really enjoyed my time in this company.

Constant Action With Super Smart People

Battery Engineering • Current Employee

Palo Alto, California, United States

Pros: The learning you'll gain in such a short time is incredible. You're being trained throughout the whole internship. The company culture is a huge open space with great ease of communication. If you do any programming work, you're going to be working a lot, but other internships that rely on a team will have you work only as long as the team, as you can imagine. Free cereal and juice is great.

Cons: Pay is known to be pretty weak comparatively. Just know you're not coming here for the pay at all, otherwise you won't enjoy your time.

4.0
Constant Action With Super Smart People
Battery Engineering • Current Employee
Palo Alto, California, United States
March 10, 2014
Pros: The learning you'll gain in such a short time is incredible. You're being trained throughout the whole internship. The company culture is a huge open space with great ease of communication. If you do any programming work, you're going to be working a lot, but other internships that rely on a team will have you work only as long as the team, as you can imagine. Free cereal and juice is great.
Cons: Pay is known to be pretty weak comparatively. Just know you're not coming here for the pay at all, otherwise you won't enjoy your time.

Great, depending on your priorities

Senior Mechanical Engineer • Current Employee

Palo Alto, California, United States

Pros: Great technical growth, smart people to learn from, culture & work-life balance greatly defined by team & manager.

Cons: Workload can be high at times. Projects may get deprioritized & cancelled on short notice. Fear of layoffs. Public image & media coverage of the company/leadership can affect morale.

3.0
Great, depending on your priorities
Senior Mechanical Engineer • Current Employee
Palo Alto, California, United States
July 24, 2025
Pros: Great technical growth, smart people to learn from, culture & work-life balance greatly defined by team & manager.
Cons: Workload can be high at times. Projects may get deprioritized & cancelled on short notice. Fear of layoffs. Public image & media coverage of the company/leadership can affect morale.

Tesla Interview Questions

Course Schedule

Determine if it is possible to finish all courses given prerequisite relationships between them. Essentially, detect if a cycle exists in the course dependencies.

GraphsRecursion

Longest Substring Without Repeating Characters

Find the length of the longest substring within a given string that contains no repeating characters. The substring must be contiguous.

StringsTwo PointersSliding Windows

Minimum Changes To Make Alternating Binary String

Determine the fewest modifications needed to transform a binary string into an alternating pattern (e.g., "0101" or "1010"). You can change '0' to '1' or '1' to '0'.

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