Waymo Software Engineer Interview Experience — A Simulation Design Round After a Recruiter Reassurance

Coding: 317. The second problem was traversing a graph with DFS, fairly simple. There was a follow-up: come up with an algorithm to prove your answer is correct. A strange follow-up.

Behavioral: Very standard. A project I'm proud of, how to handle priorities, things like that.

System design: This was the first round of the interview. What a disastrous start. I was interviewing with the simulation team. Before the interview, I'd told the recruiter that I felt it was a complete mismatch and asked whether I could switch teams. The recruiter told me not to worry, that they wouldn't test any simulation knowledge. Then it turned out to be designing a simulation system. Sigh.

I'd never used a simulation system or even seen one... I had no idea where to start. It wasn't like other systems you might use in everyday life. I was just done. That interview was killing me.

I was really upset about being rejected. Waymo has always been a company I wanted to join. Maybe things would have been different if I'd interviewed with another team.