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      Senior Software Engineer Interview

      Oct 31, 2009
      Anonymous Interview Candidate
      Santa Clara, CA
      No offer
      Neutral experience
      Easy interview

      Application

      I applied online. The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Cisco (Santa Clara, CA) in Oct 2009

      Interview

      I see the position on the Cisco career website. Submitted my resume and fill out the forms. Got a phone interview a couple weeks later and then schedule a on-site next week. It is a technical interview and I did a lot of white-board coding. The questions are not difficult (like reverse a link list). But the manager pays a lot attention to the details. For example, how you optimize a couple statement and what variable naming scheme you use. Overall it is not a tough interview. I think I am qualified for the position but I am not the type of developer the manager is looking for.

      Interview questions [1]

      Question 1

      how to reverse a link list
      3 Answers

      Other Senior Software Engineer Interview Reviews for Cisco

      Sr. Software Engineer Interview

      Apr 29, 2026
      Anonymous Interview Candidate
      Bengaluru
      No offer
      Negative experience
      Easy interview

      Application

      I applied through an employee referral. The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Cisco (Bengaluru)

      Interview

      I applied for the position and successfully attended the screening and coding round. The interview mainly focused on C programming and networking concepts, including IP subnetting, bitwise operations, and implementing logic to verify if an IP belongs to a subnet. There were also questions on TCP/UDP and debugging concepts. After the interview, I followed up with the recruiter, who shared that based on the feedback, my profile will not proceed further.

      Senior Software Engineer Interview

      Jan 6, 2026
      Anonymous Interview Candidate
      Tel Aviv-Yafo
      No offer
      Positive experience
      Average interview

      Application

      I applied online. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Cisco (Tel Aviv-Yafo) in Dec 2025

      Interview

      After applying on site I was reached by a recruiter which asked a few role specific questions and scheduled an technical interview with the recruiting manager. First interview: Introduction, tell me about yourself etc and the main question was "Talk about a system that you worked on end to end". Second Interview: System design interview. Role specific system, nothing special just a bit tricky. (not design youtube or twitter or anything like that).

      Interview questions [1]

      Question 1

      Talk about a system that you worked on end to end.
      Answer question

      Senior Software Engineer Interview

      Oct 24, 2025
      Anonymous Interview Candidate
      Bengaluru
      No offer
      Negative experience
      Average interview

      Application

      I applied through a recruiter. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Cisco (Bengaluru) in Oct 2025

      Interview

      I was reached out by the recruiter, and the interview was scheduled for the next week. Enough time was given to me for the preparation. Total of 5 rounds were planned in advanced, and I was told I will proceed to the next rounds if I clear the previous rounds. (Eliminations) First Round: General discussion on what I have worked on. No surprises. Second Round: A practical coding questions, mix of low level and high level system design. Interviewer gave clear instructions about what is expected in each task. This round went smoothly from my point of view. Third Round: This was the round where things went upside down. Interviewer joined 30 minutes late, and seemed uninterested. The interviewer did not follow the basic etiquettes. He spend 5-10 minutes reading my resume on spot, with no communication and awkward silence. Next 10-15 minutes followed on general question about what I had worked on in the past. Then I was given a puzzle question, with certain constraints (No code required, verbal solution was asked). I could not solve it optimally. Even the interviewer was confused and he couldn't solve it with the constraints given. (After the interview, I googled the solution for the same problem, and came to know the constraints were a little different). Got a call from the recruiter after 30 minutes that I was not selected, and need not join for the next rounds. TLDR: Difficulty wise I would say the interview was of medium difficulty. DSA - Leetcode easy and easy-medium. System Design - Practical questions, no surprises. Low Level Design - Practical questions which most developers would have already worked on. But a lot depends on the interviewer.

      Interview questions [1]

      Question 1

      System Design: Design a distributed message queue. Low Level Design: Design a rate limiter. Coding: From the two streams of very large numbers (not able to fit in int64 or float64), calculate the running sum and send the response over the third stream. Puzzle: You have a set of 8 balls. 7 are of the same weight, and 1 is of different weight (may be lighter, may be heavier). Find the odd weight ball in minimum number of tries using a weighing scale.
      Answer question
      2

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