Qualcomm OA Experience 2026 | 60 Questions | Aptitude + Technical + Course Specific | 90 Minutes

I gave the Qualcomm Online Assessment yesterday and wanted to share my experience and the questions I remember so that it may help others preparing for Qualcomm OAs.

OA Pattern

• Total Duration: 90 minutes

• Total Questions: 60

• 3 Sections:

  1. Aptitude
  2. Technical
  3. Course Specific

• 20 questions per section

• 30 minutes per section

• Marking Scheme:

  • Correct: +1
  • Incorrect: -0.25

There were a lot of output-based questions, especially from C/C++, bit manipulation, pointers, OS, COA and data structures.

Aptitude Questions I Remember

1. Perfect Square / Number Theory

Find the number of positive integers n such that:

n(n + 84)

is a perfect square.

2. Coding-Decoding / Operation Based

A question similar to:

U R 16 22

after performing some operation P gives:

Y N 20 18

We had to determine the output for another given string/input using the same operation.

3. Container Mixture

The volumes of three containers were in the ratio:

1 : 2 : 3

The water : soda ratios in the containers were respectively:

• Container 1 → 3 : 6
• Container 2 → 4 : 5
• Container 3 → 2 : 7

All three were mixed into one container and we had to find the final water : soda ratio.

4. Circular Arrangement / Flags

There were 8 shops arranged in a circle.

We had to place flags on exactly 3 shops such that no two selected shops were adjacent.

Question: Find the number of possible ways.

5. Letter Coding

Given:

PLANT = 42135

BRIDE = 15423

Find the corresponding code for:

CLOUD = ?

6. Seating Arrangement – 5 Questions

Around 8 friends:

Alice, Bob, Clara, David, Eva, Frank, Grace and Henry

were sitting around a square table.

Some of the conditions I remember:

• Alice was sitting at a corner.
• Henry was opposite Alice.
• Clara was sitting to the right of Henry.
• Grace was not sitting at a corner.
• Eva and Bob were sitting at midpoints on opposite sides.
• There were a few more conditions.

Around 5 questions were based on this single arrangement.

7. Data Interpretation – Around 5 Questions

A graph showing sales across different years was given.

Questions were like:

Sales in 2013 were what percentage of the total sales in 2016?

There were around 5 questions from the same graph.

8. Direction Sense

A person moves:

• 10 m North → P
• 5 m East → Q
• 7 m South → R
• 5 m West → S
• 5 m South → T

We had to find the distance between T and Q.

9. Time and Work

A can complete a work in 24 days.

B can complete it in 30 days.

• A works alone for 4 days.
• Then A and B work together for 6 days.
• Then C joins them.
• A, B and C together finish the remaining work in 4 days.

Find the number of days C alone would take to complete the work.

10. Mean / Average

There was one aptitude question based on mean/average.

I don't remember the exact values.

Technical / CS Questions

Digital Logic

11. Number of OR Gates

Find the number of OR gates required to implement an expression similar to:

XY + YZ + X'Z

12. Number of AND Gates

There was another Boolean expression question similar to:

AX(B + 1 + R)

We had to determine the number of AND gates required.

Number System

13. Decimal to Binary

Convert:

307

into binary.

C/C++ Output Questions

There were around 4–5 output questions involving pointers and another 2–3 involving arrays.

14. Multiple-Level Pointer

A question similar to:

int x = 5;
int *p = &x;
int ***q = ...;

*p = *p + 8;

Then we had to determine the output involving values similar to:

x
*p
***q

The actual pointer declarations were slightly more complicated.

15. Pointer with Array

Something similar to:

int arr[] = {3, 6, 9, 12, 15};
int *p = arr;

*p = *p + 2;

Then expressions similar to these were printed:

*p++
*p
*(++p)

Important to know the difference between:

*p++
(*p)++
*(++p)

16. Loop with Continue

for(int i = 1; i < 5; i++) {
    if(i == 3)
        continue;

    cout << i;
}

Question asked either the output or how many times the loop/print statement executes.

Bit Manipulation

There were around 4–5 output questions from bit manipulation.

17. XOR + Left Shift

A question similar to:

int a = 26;
int b = 11;

a = a ^ (1 << 2);

Then further operations were performed and the final values were asked.

18. Multiple XOR Operations

int X = 12;

X ^= X << 1;
X ^= X >> 2;

Find the final value of X.

19. Bitwise Expression / n & (n-1)

There was another output question containing something similar to:

if ((n & (n - 1)) == n)

and a condition involving:

if(n == 0)
    break;

We had to trace the code/output.

Questions based on:

n & (n - 1)

are definitely worth revising.

Operating Systems

20. SJF Scheduling

Processes:

We had to calculate the average waiting time using SJF.

21. Process State Diagram

A diagram of operating system process states was given.

Questions were related to transitions between states such as:

Ready → Running → Waiting/Blocked → Ready

22. IPC

One question was based on Inter-Process Communication (IPC).

Important topics include:

• Pipes
• Shared memory
• Message queues
• Signals
• Sockets

23. True/False Questions

There were around 2–3 True/False questions based on:

• Operating Systems
• Computer Organization and Architecture

24. Resource Allocation Graph

A Resource Allocation Graph (RAG) was given.

We had to determine something related to:

• Deadlock
• Resource allocation
• Process-resource dependency

Data Structures

25. Circular Queue

There was a question based on a circular queue, probably involving front/rear movement or overflow/underflow.

26. Stack Overflow

A question asked something similar to:

How many push/pop operations will be required before the given stack reaches overflow?

27. BST Construction + Deletion

Insert the following elements into a BST:

88, 66, 90, 50, 55, 53, 57

Then delete:

66

and find the resulting preorder traversal.

28. Heap Sort

One question was based on Heap Sort.

Worth revising:

• Max heap construction
• Heapify
• Time complexity
• Array representation
• Sorting steps

Arrays / Memory Address Calculation

29. 2D Array Address Calculation

An array was given with unusual index ranges similar to:

A[-3...5, -5...8]

Each element occupied:

2 bytes

and something like:

A[0][0] = 234

was provided.

We had to calculate the base address / address of an element.

So revise address calculation for multidimensional arrays with non-zero and negative lower bounds.

Overall Experience

The test was quite fast-paced because we had only:

30 minutes for 20 questions in each section

which means roughly 1.5 minutes per question.

Negative marking also made random guessing risky.

From what I remember, the most important topics for the technical section were:

• C/C++ pointers
• Pointer increment/decrement
• Arrays
• Bit manipulation
• Operating Systems
• SJF scheduling
• Process states
• IPC
• Deadlocks / Resource Allocation Graph
• Digital Logic
• Binary conversion
• Stack and Queue
• BST
• Heap / Heap Sort
• Memory address calculation
• Computer Organization

And for aptitude:

• Time and Work
• Mixture
• Direction Sense
• Number Theory
• Coding-Decoding
• Circular arrangements
• Seating arrangements
• Data Interpretation
• Mean/Average

I attempted around 45 out of 60 questions because of the -0.25 negative marking and preferred not to make random guesses.

Hope this helps anyone preparing for an upcoming Qualcomm OA.