Role: Associate Software Engineer
Department: WiFi
Location: Bengaluru
Mode of Interview: Offline (Onsite)
Number of Technical Rounds: 1

Interview Details
The interview was conducted in-person and consisted of a single technical round. The panel focused heavily on C programming, systems concepts, and WiFi fundamentals. Below are the questions I was asked:

C Programming & Systems Concepts

Explain the C compilation process.

Discussed stages like preprocessing, compilation, assembly, and linking.

Explain how the compiler works – parsing, token creation, etc.

Asked to elaborate on lexical analysis, syntax analysis, semantic analysis, and intermediate code generation.

Explain the memory layout of a C program.

Covered segments like text, data, BSS, heap, and stack.

Write a C program and explain where each variable/data is stored in memory.

Required to map variables to memory segments (global, local, static, etc.).

Write a recursive function to print the sum of first N natural numbers.

Also asked to explain how the stack behaves during recursion.

Write a program to insert a node at any given position in a linked list.

Focused on pointer manipulation and edge cases.

Operating Systems & Scheduling

Define criteria for designing a process scheduler.

Discussed factors like CPU utilization, throughput, turnaround time, waiting time, fairness, and priority.

What is the use of locks?

Explained mutual exclusion, preventing race conditions, and synchronization.

Would you perform context switching if a process is in a critical section?

Required to reason about preemption and process safety.

WiFi & Networking Concepts

Explain address fields in a WiFi frame when traffic flows from STA1 → AP → STA2.

Needed to describe how MAC addresses are used in different frame types.

What are the power save modes in WiFi?

Discussed legacy power save, U-APSD, and modern enhancements.

Result
Status: Rejected
Unfortunately, I wasn’t well-prepared for the depth of questions, especially in systems and WiFi internals. I was quite nervous and stressed during the interview, which affected my ability to think clearly and articulate answers. I couldn’t answer many of the questions confidently.