Systems Engineer Interview Questions
Systems engineers work closely with systems analysts to maintain a company's IT system by developing the operating systems that run computers. Expect to be quizzed on a variety of technical questions that will test your knowledge of how computer systems work. Employers prefer candidates with a bachelor's degree in an engineering field and previous experience with technology.
Top Systems Engineer Interview Questions & How to Answer
Here are three top systems engineer interview questions and how to answer them:
Question #1: Describe a previous systems engineering project you worked on. What was your role?
How to answer: This question gives you a chance to talk about your experience and accomplishments. If possible, talk about a project that you completed before the deadline or one where you exceeded the client's expectations. Use numbers and statistics to quantify your accomplishments.
Question #2: Have you created a disaster recovery plan for a company? What are the most important factors in a successful plan?
How to answer: Systems engineers often create backup systems and disaster recovery plans designed to survive a variety of different scenarios. Talk about how disaster recovery plans should consider a business's physical and electronic assets and its ability to deliver customer service after damage from storms, fires, or other events.
Question #3: Imagine you're working on a major project, and there's a conflict between two technical teams. How would you resolve it?
How to answer: Systems engineers often work with multiple technology teams, and leadership skills like resolving disagreements are important. Showcase these skills by discussing how you would handle a personal disagreement between two coworkers, a conflict about business procedures or decisions, and other problems. You can also talk about arguments that you helped resolve between colleagues at your previous job.
How do you handle irate clients that are having technical trobules and need to work immediately.
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You tell them, you understand the frustration and you will immediately send someone to fix the issue. You do basic troubleshooting and if it doesn’t work, send tech support. Less
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Approach the situation with 'we' working on the issue. Know that your are there to help solve this and act towards that, being calm and accurate towards solution. Even if the solution is that you will have to find out more and have to return to solve this issue. Less
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Ask for the ip address, then ask if it is an on or near-air emergency. Ask for the symptoms and if others are experiencing the same problem. If no one else is then have them jump on another pc if possible/feasible. Remote into the pc or tx the ip to the relevant trouble-shooter. Less
What is the difference between RAID 0 & RAID 5?
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To expand on the previous answer, RAID 0 improves HDD performance dramaticaly, but since there is no mirroring if one drive dies data is lost. RAID 0 should never be used on a system with critical data. In RAID 5, performance is slower, but it allows for the failure of a HDD with no loss of data. Consider instead, RAID 10. It requires a minimum of four HDD's, but provides an increase in performance with redundancy. Less
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Through questions like this, interviewers are mostly trying to test your skillset (and its relevance to the role) as robustly as possible, so be prepared for multiple offshoots and followups. It could be a useful exercise to do mocks with friends or colleagues in Avanade to get a real sense of what the interview is actually like. Alternatively Prepfully has a ton of Avanade Systems Engineer experts who provide mock interviews for a pretty reasonable amount. prepfully.com/practice-interviews Less
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It should a simple question if you have worked with computers & HDDs. RAID 0 - Block striping (req. 2 HDDs) and no mirroring or parity RAID 5 - Block striping with 1 dedicated parity drive (req. 3 HDDs) Less
can you host multiple https sites with different domain names but same IP on the same server? how
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The way question posed, the answer is YES, since you could cover all those https sites with a single certificate. But now this should even work for individual certificates http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_Name_Indication Less
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NO, server cant tell which site is which because traffic is encrypted.
How do you represent a real-world quantity in a digital system?
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What he really wanted me to do was draw the schematic of an ADC input circuit. I don't know why he didn't just ask that in the first place. Since it was a broad question, I spent over 5 minutes explaining binary representation, word size (8/16/32bit), endian-ness, and finally when I mentioned ADCs, he latched onto that and tried to get me to dig deeper. So I drew a block diagram of an ADC, focusing mostly on the interface to the microcontroller, and the channel select multiplexer. He grew increasingly frustrated and tried to get me to draw more detailed sub-circuits for each of the blocks in my diagram. Finally, I got to the actual ADC front end, and I drew a classic textbook R2R ladder circuit, and he seemed satisfied with that. By that point we had spent over 10 minutes in an interview where he was already complaining that he had a lot of ground to cover in limited time. I was so frazzled by the question that I did not even think of mentioning a successive approximation ADC as an alternative to the R2R, even though it's a much more common implementation in my experience. Less
Hoeveel manieren kun je bedenken om een naald in een hooiberg te vinden?
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The answer to all questions is 42
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Waarom wil je de naald vinden? Weet je zeker dat je een naald zoekt? Wie heeft de naald daar neergelegd? Waarom wil je meerdere manieren weten? Wat is je doel? Less
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Ik zou naar de supermarkt gaan en een nieuwe naald kopen. Dat is een stuk sneller en makkelijker. Less
I thought the interview was all about communication skill... no c c++ java.. no unanswerable questions... no domination... quite cool... he had to see me speaking confidently with out the bias of fear r something else... so he kept the interview cool... of-course, i have tried my best for that... You will be almost selected if u pass the written exam... provided with acceptable communication levels and confidence.. no need of Hollywood level speed or verbal skills... just convey your matter in a cool and simple way.. Take some care to protect your character by answering with contradiction or domination.... if done so.. u have got yourself a job at Infosys...
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it was really usefully .thanks
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its asuch a important information ......... thank you .............
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really helpfull information....thank u:)
You have 8 pennies, 7 weight the same, one weighs less. you also have a judges scale. Find the one that weighs less in less than 3 steps.
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A better answer: Split the 8 pennies into 3 groups of 3,3,2 pennies. Weight the first two groups of 3 pennies each. Case 1) - They weight the same. Therefore, take third group of 2 pennies and find the lighter coin. Case 2) Group 1 weights more than Group 2. Take group 2 (3 pennies) and pick any 2 out of 3. If they weight the same, then the third penny is lighter. Answer is trivial if they don't weight the same. It works for any scenario. Always split the groups in 3. Less
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Neil has it right. Dave - the question says less than three steps.
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I Can do it in one step: Look at the year on the pennies. If 7 pennies weigh the same it means that all 7 were manufactured either before or after 1982, when the mint changed the composition of the coin from solid copper to copper with a zinc core. the one that weighs differently was minted on the opposite side of 1982 as the 7 other pennies. Less
What will you do when your girl friend is getting married on the same day as a important client meeting?
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yes, firstly i will do marriage
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I would rather invite my client ti my wedding. afrer giving him a feast will set up the meeting there itself. Less
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First I have one question my girlfriend getting married me or another person??? Suppose she getting married another person my answer is I feel 💯 because ture feeling and then I attended client meeting successfully ... Why because she think am not important person in her life .. so that reason of she getting married another person... I think client meeting more important .. because my client give me a full trust with me . Less
How many trailing zeros are in the number 5! (5 factorial)?
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This sounds like one geared not so much towards getting the right answer, but getting to it the right way. If you think a bit and say "one", the interviewer will know you did it the brute-force way, doing the math. You'd get at the answer faster, and probably impress them more, if you think instead how many times a ten will be produced in doing that math, rather than what the actual result of the math will be. Less
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http://www.purplemath.com/modules/factzero.htm
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To generate a zero, we need a (5,2) factor pair. For any given number N, we have at least N/2 number of multiples 2, so the number of zeroes can be determined by the count of numbers that have 5 as a factor (i.e we have more 2s than 5s) Roughly, we can count N/5 numbers that are multiples of 5, add to that numbers that are multiples of 5^2 (these will have two 5 factors) i.e N/25, add to that numbers that are multiples of 5^3 (these will have three 5 factors) and so on. For eg: 10! -> 2 multiples of 5 -> 2 zeroes 100! -> 20 multiples of 5 + 4 multiples of 25 -> 24 zeros 500! -> 100 multiples of 5 + 20 multiples of 25 + 4 multiples of 125 -> 124 zeros 1000! -> 200 multiples of 5 + 40 multiples of 25 + 8 multiples of 125 (5^3) + 1 multiple of 625 (5^4) -> 249 zeros Less
Given a page size and a number, align the number with the nearest page. (Note: This was a phone interview question. The interviewer and I used an online document to share ideas about this problem.
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I think that at the faster solution you mean int getAlignedValue_Fast(int pageSize, int valueToAlign) { return valueToAlign & ~(pageSize-1); } Note: There is a difference between !(pageSize-1) and ~(pageSize-1) ~(0x11) is 0xee !(0x11) is 0 Less
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I just wanted to point out that the "faster solution" only works if the pageSize is assumed to be a power of 2. For example, suppose pageSize = 10 (or 01010 in binary), and valueToAlign = 24 (or 11000 in binary), then the fast method would give 16, but it should be 20. Anyways, thanks for posting the question and solution. Less
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@observer I see how the mask works out for the alignment, why it is works mathematically? Thanks Less