System design interview- what to expect for compiler engineers?

Intel
eragonLite

Go to company page Intel

eragonLite
Jun 12, 2021 15 Comments

Full disclosure- I haven’t interviewed anywhere since grad school. And even then I basically joined the place I interned at. Till now I had mostly said ‘not interested’ to interview requests. But I’ve recently started setting up a few interviews . Till now I’ve done phone screens with Apple, Facebook and Nvidia and they have been mostly talking about previous experience, some coding, some compiler theory questions, some computer architecture questions- all of which makes sense.

I now have an on-site interview scheduled with 2 of them - and possibly another with the 3rd. On doing some reading up online, I see system design interview mentioned a lot. FB was the only one which brought up system design interview as a possibility for the virtual on-site.

So my question is -
1. is system design interview a thing at most places?
2. Is it a thing irrespective of the position? To elaborate- I’m interviewing for compiler positions…so is it fair to not expect say FB to ask me design their ‘user feed’ etc? I would understand if they ask me how I would go about implementing a language feature for a compiler but designing a service etc does not make any sense to me. Am I being too naive?

Appreciate any input from others who have been in similar position.

YOE - 5

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TOP 15 Comments
  • Nuro
    ThoseRat

    Go to company page Nuro

    ThoseRat
    Some specialized positions will skip the system design interview, but more often than not it will be included even if it isn't really relevant to the position. It is also weighted very heavily when deciding between extending an offer at a "Senior" level, or an offer at the level just below.
    Jun 12, 2021 3
    • Nuro
      ThoseRat

      Go to company page Nuro

      ThoseRat
      If you're curious for a specific role, recruiters are often very open to talking about how the interview loop is structured for a given position.
      Jun 12, 2021
    • Intel
      eragonLite

      Go to company page Intel

      eragonLite
      OP
      Yeah. I should have asked. That’s my mistake. FB was the only place where the hiring manager explicitly said it’ll include a system design round. I expect similar with Apple. NVidia is a bit of a wildcard- can’t find much info about their process etc and they didn’t exactly let me know what kinda interviews to expect for the on-site outside of how many.
      Jun 12, 2021
  • 8x8
    Dfrb67

    Go to company page 8x8

    Dfrb67
    It has nothing to do with your previous experience. You need to study hard now. It is expected for senior level hires.
    Jun 12, 2021 3
    • 8x8
      Dfrb67

      Go to company page 8x8

      Dfrb67
      FB expects seniors to be good in Sys design no matter what your day to day job is. Apple is team dependent so the interview might not have system design. I don’t know about Nvidia.

      Best to have discussion with recruiter about it. For FB, you need to study hard now.
      Jun 12, 2021
    • Intel
      eragonLite

      Go to company page Intel

      eragonLite
      OP
      Thanks for the info!
      Jun 12, 2021
  • Google
    noref

    Go to company page Google

    noref
    They should not be asking distributed system design. But designing an embedded system or compiler/interpreter/language feature would be very fair and expected.
    Jun 12, 2021 2
    • Oracle
      Alsjurt

      Go to company page Oracle

      Alsjurt
      Should but unfortunately this is not a norm. Unless the position is specific to embedded systems, interviewer will most probably ask you about the distributed systems if the company mostly work on distributed systems.
      Jun 12, 2021
    • Intel
      eragonLite

      Go to company page Intel

      eragonLite
      OP
      This scares me! Might have to get up to speed just in case it comes up. But frankly I have a very rudimentary understanding of cloud services etc since it’s never been something I’m super interested in.
      Jun 12, 2021
  • Amazon
    fakele

    Go to company page Amazon

    fakele
    There are obvious design questions in compilers. They should not be asking you distributed system design. Play on your strengths.

    BTW, can in interest you in devices org at Amazon? 😊
    There are problems to solve for cross target compilation, ABIs, AoT and JIT. DM if interested.
    Jun 12, 2021 3
    • Amazon
      fakele

      Go to company page Amazon

      fakele
      Send me a link to your linked in profile and I’d let the recruiters follow up with you. We are looking for engineers in systems background and there is exciting work for compilers related stuff as well.

      In case you’re interested. 🙂
      Jun 12, 2021
    • Intel
      eragonLite

      Go to company page Intel

      eragonLite
      OP
      DM’ed link to profile.
      Jun 13, 2021