Embedded Software Engineering Interview Questions & Answers

Feel free to leave your embedded software engineering interview questions in the comments below! Cheers!

The Dog is enjoying his life

great! I was asked some basic questions like how much memory does unsigned char or short data type occupy? Explain what heap memory is? Next week I have another Technical interview with a big company. I will share their questions here .

the questions in th video :
1. Explain how the spi works.
2. How does a DMA work?
3. What is Semaphore ? How is it different from Mutex ?
4. How to collect data in parallel and in sync ?
5. When and why to use keyword volatile ?
6. What are some ways to minimize MCU power consumption ?
7. What are the benefits of RTOS ?
8. Should we always use RTOS ?
9. What to remember when writing an ISR ?
10. What are little and big Endian ?
11. What are pull-up and pull-down Resistors ?

Dog behind you is so cute 🥰 !!
Thanks for informative video.

As a computer engineering student, its great knowing some of these questions! Still have lots to learn though... haha

Network communication protocols?

DMA = Direct Memory Access, not Dynamic Memory Access

They ask about what is on the data sheet? It takes like 1/2 hour to read that and understand it. Why would ANYONE memorize this.

DMA ...noty Dynamic but Direct

Explain CAN buss brother

Great video,
How can we select a clock ? Of course it depends on the requirement say for example I have only bare metal code there is no rtos and there are only few peripherals like uart, i2c and spi and it works on standard frequency.
So can we identify this much clock is enough for this project?

For the bonus question about pull-up/down-resistors I would also explain, why I need them, especially because i don't want floating (undefined, random) readings on an input pin. I you have an unconnected pin when the button is not pressed, the input is likely to be random (not really, but hard to predict)

How many years of experience do you need before they don't ask you stuff like that? I feel like I used to be able to ace all those questions, but now I'm more focused on my very specific parts of my project and I don't worry about some of that stuff.

Im from Paraguay. I am finishing my degree in Electronics Engineering and Im surprised by the ammount of questions that I can answer in this video.
The thing with the career itself here is that there are not many jobs available for us locally. I tried applying online but I got rejected many times. Can you give some advice?

I have seen all of these question in the interview. good video!

DMA = Direct Memory Access

You need to provide correct and clear info.. what is miso or mosi.. DMA is Direct Memory Access ..

Very nice explanation. I would like to add 1 point for mutex and sem. In addition to what you explained, the difference in mutex and sem is in their usage. Mutex is used for mutual exclusion and sem is used for synchronization between tasks or tasks and ISRs

Isn't DMA, Direct Memory Access? I only heard it that way and not Dynamic Memory Access as told in the video. Or is this another name?

Great video! Just a little comment on cpu clock freq. on power consumption; in some cases you actually need max clock freq to achieve lower power consumption. (e.g. serve all the tasks and do all the calculations as fast as possible and go back to sleep).

How the locking procedure of mutex take place

I like how emo your dog is. =D

9/10 :)

Thanks for the content! And please keep featuring your dog in the background 🥲

Some questions I answered during an interview I gave recently (Embedded + OOP):

1. How do you prevent memory leaks?
2. How do you use stack?
3. When do you want to use static classes?
4. What is polymorphism and inheritance?
5. Major difference between C and Python.
6. Have you used pointers as parameters to functions?
7. How have you used interrupts in your code before?
8. How have you used watchdogtimer in your code?
9. How do you use pointers?
10. How do you use private constructors?

These mostly cover what I was asked, it is not strictly an embedded role but embedded plus general software developer role. Hopefully I'll get in!

I need to check the interview rounds of top companies like Qualcomm, Rockwell and Honeywell for embedded software engineer. So, where can I find it?

Thanks a lot for Awesome content 😊 keep going…

Some Interesting Questions:
1. multi core programming and debug
2. IoT and Embedded
3. Power management, clocks
4. role of OSI in newer communications like pcie, all wireless, usb, thunderbolt etc
5. Bus
6. Memory management, caching
7. s/w topics like - preprocessors, understanding coredumps, struct vs union
8. LLDB

Looking fwd for more videos 👍🏻

👍

DMA = Direct Memory Access (not Dynamic)

in DMA, actually CPU is not in ideal mode and also CPU does not give all controls to the DMA controller.

You are one of a kind make more and from everything

Thank you! These questions are really helpful! Keep it going. You're great! :D

Why use bare metal programing when we have compiler to write a startup code and dump code in microC

Great Video Greidi! Just started looking for my next Embedded Software job. Great Timing

Wow, these are some really low-level questions and you really provide great information! As an interviewer I'm much more interested in the person sitting accross me. Such as teamwork, the ability to learn new things, communication skills and so on. Technical skills and abilities are mostly already pointed out in the CV, but the non-technical skills.

I think it is also good to add that if you don't have an answer it is okay to be honest about it, not everyone knows everything and again the ability to learn is also very important.

Hey Greidi! I'm so glad you're back with making videos regularly!
I remember you were studying at Georgia Tech part time and I'll be going there this fall for master's in ECE
Let me know where I can get in touch with you, have a lot to discuss :)

I really appreciate these videos. I am about to finish my degree and I want to make a career in embedded systems. Videos like this are very helpful to get an idea of ​​what I am going to face. It would be great if you continued making videos about embedded systems. Thank you!!

Some of the questions that immediately came to my mind are
1) What is a race condition? What causes it and how to avoid it?
2) What happens in a startup code?
3) How does a cpu handle an interrupt?
4) what is an interrupt latency? How can it be measured?
5) What is a software interrupt?
6) what is the difference between a breakpoint and watchpoint?
7) What is meant by board bringup activity?
8) Explain a scenario where you have used a logic analyzer

Hey Greidi
I just wanted to say thank you for this valuable video, I am a self taught electrical and embedded software engineer and I would like to ask what kind of project do you recommend doing and putting to my portfolio.
Thank you in advance

I am only on my first Embedded systems class so I am wondering is DMA a RTOS concept?

Hi buddy, I have a question does IoT Engineers use SQL for Analyzing Data?

Good information, thanks a lot💙. Love from India

Love from India 💯
I just now started as a Embedded C Engineer..... keep doing more videos for us