I applied for Ciena in September 2016, to the Embedded Software Engineer new grad posting. It took a month for a response for an initial phone screen. The phone screen consisted of indepth questions about your resume with 4 senior engineers/managers - be prepared to talk about all the projects you have listed. I was also quizzed on C/OS/embedded systems topics:
-What is the role of an OS? Kernel vs user space? Size of a pointer? Compare and contrast LL and arrays - why use one over the other?
I was invited for an onsite in Ottawa a week after - a day trip flight, all expenses paid, and interviewing for 2 roles: Embedded Software Engineer, as well as just Software Engineer. A mandatory coding assessment was also provided before hand consisting of 4 questions: modified fizzbuzz, 2 code debugging/analysis, and string manipulation/sorting. All questions and solutions were C based. They were of fair difficulty (if you've programmed before, you should be fine) - you had 48 hours to complete the assessment, and your solutions are reviewed onsite .
My interviews lasted from 11am to 4pm, with 3 different sets of interviewers from 4 different teams. All interviewers shared notes at the end, although each still asked similar questions. The first round was just 1 interviewer - he asked me questions off my resume for about an hour (all tailored to your experience), then we went to lunch in the cafeteria. The second round consisted of a panel of 3 interviewers including a lab tour - Ciena's R&D headquarters is in Ottawa, and as such the hardware and software labs are also located there. This interview was ~1.5 hours, with again questions based off my experience and my resume. A review of the code and analysis of the problems completed prior to the interview was also done here. The final round was another 1.5 hour interview with a pair of interviewers from 2 separate teams - again, resume based questions as well as "why Ciena", and open ended C based questions to gauge your response/thinking.
Overall, there was no coding on the onsite - only questions based off your experience to gauge how you learn and think. The culture is fairly corporate, but they have a new office being built which is designed to be more modern (e.g. half cubicles, more open space, etc.). Interviewers were all extremely friendly and definitely knowledgeably in their respective areas. It can be difficult to understand what they do as they do not sell to consumers - be sure to really dig into that in the interview.
The offer is average/slightly above - minimal relocation to Ottawa is provided.
