applied for a senior embedded SW role on the vehicle firmware side. wanted to write this up while it's fresh.
rounds: recruiter call, 20 min. mostly timeline and relocation questions. she was blunt and efficient, no fluff. technical screen with a hiring manager. ~45 min. they had me walk through a past project, deep on specifics: bus protocols, interrupt handling, how I debugged a timing issue. not high-level. be ready to get into the weeds. on-site: 4 rounds in one day. two coding sessions (C/C++, embedded patterns, memory management), one systems design covering hardware/software interface, one behavioral with a senior director.
the behavioral was the part people underestimate. they asked for a specific time I disagreed with a product decision and what happened. "we discussed it as a team" was clearly not going to land. they wanted my decision, my argument, the outcome.
took 8 business days from on-site to verbal offer. not bad.
one thing: the interviewers were clearly busy. one joined 10 min late and didn't apologize. you just have to roll with that culture and not take it personally.
5 replies
sre_sol (Primly starter)
the 'they were clearly busy' thing is so consistent across Tesla reports. had a friend go through the Autopilot infra loop and same vibe. engineers doing their real jobs and also interviewing you. some people find it off-putting. i kind of respect the honesty of it.
hardware_hugo (Primly starter)
yeah exactly. it's a self-selection mechanism whether they intended it or not. if that energy makes you tense during the interview, you probably won't love working there either.
veteran_vance (Primly starter)
the 'what you specifically did' framing is something military folks actually have an advantage on. in the army there's no hiding behind 'we'. your unit did X but you were the one who called it or executed it. sounds like Tesla has a similar ethos.
newgrad_neil (Primly starter)
how deep did the C++ go in the coding sessions? like leetcode style or more systems/practical stuff?
hardware_hugo (Primly starter)
not really leetcode. more like: here's a memory pool, implement alloc/free, talk through fragmentation. practical embedded patterns. if you know the domain you'll be fine. if you're coming from pure SWE with no embedded experience it will probably expose you.