National Instruments Software Engineer II Interview Questions & Reviews

Interviewed Oct 2010 in Austin, TX (took 2 months)

I met up with their recruiters at a career fair. I chatted with them, and later that evening they called me and asked to interview me. We arranged a phone interview for a few days later. An engineer called me and we talked about my experience, personality traits (talk about a time when you had a conflict with another engineer, etc.). Then I was asked a fairly involved technical question which I solved by typing in an online collaboration environment with pseudo-code. After the phone interview, they asked me to submit a formal application through their careers website.

A few days later, I received an invite for an on-site interview. Because of a planned trip, they accelerated the interview schedule for me and had me down in Austin within a month. I was flown down on a Wednesday and arrived at the campus at 9am on Thursday. I was met by a host engineer (independent of the hiring process) and taken to the first of a series of three interviews with engineers from three different teams in the company. Each interview was approximately an hour in length, with a ten minute break in between. They were highly technical in nature, with specific software challenges presented to me and a series of discussions about the solutions. After the second of these, I was taken down for lunch in the cafeteria, then back upstairs for a third and final interview.

After the last interview, I met with a manager who conducted a debriefing and answered my questions. Finally, my host engineer gave me a quick tour of the building before I was sent on my way. Later in the evening, my host engineer took me out for dinner and gave me a few suggestions for things to see in the city on my free day.

Again, due to my ensuing trip, they accelerated the offer process and I had the offer package in my hands within ten days of my interview.