I applied online. The process took 2 months. I interviewed at Qualcomm (San Diego, CA) in Jul 2016
Interview
I applied online. One month later I had phone interview invitation, following onsite interview. The engineers asked technical questions related to wireless communications, probability theory and my previous projects. Since I am recent PhD graduate, they want me to make a 1 hour presentation to the team in the morning before one-to-one interviews start.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Basic probability questions, multi access transmission schemes.
I applied through college or university. I interviewed at Qualcomm in Nov 2025
Interview
round 1 - OA (campus)
round 2 - interview (which itself consisted of 2 tech rounds and 1 hr round)
Interview process was good, interviewers from company were too good
Technical questions on computer architecture based on core subjects like operating systems, computer networks they grilled specially on practical use cases and how data flow end to end.they asked about concept of pipeline and a bit about knowledge of microcontroller
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Computer architecture
Computer networks
Data structure based on linked list and tree
Qualcomm had come to my University for two roles – Hardware and Software. I applied for Hardware Role. There was one round of online tests and 2 interview rounds.
Round 1 (Online Test): It consisted of 3 sections with 20 questions in each section and 30 mins per section. You can travel through the questions in a particular section. The marking scheme was +1 for the correct answer and -0.25 for the wrong answer. Approximately 1500 people gave the test for both software and hardware role.
Systems Engineer applicants have rated the interview process at Qualcomm with 2.9 out of 5 (where 5 is the highest level of difficulty) and assessed their interview experience as 56% positive. To compare, the company-average is 62.5% positive. This is according to Glassdoor user ratings.
Candidates applying for Systems Engineer roles take an average of 29 days to get hired, when considering 45 user submitted interviews for this role. To compare, the hiring process at Qualcomm overall takes an average of 22 days.
Common stages of the interview process at Qualcomm as a Systems Engineer according to 45 Glassdoor interviews include:
Phone interview: 33%
One on one interview: 23%
Skills test: 11%
Presentation: 9%
Group panel interview: 7%
Background check: 7%
IQ intelligence test: 3%
Personality test: 3%
Other: 2%
Drug test: 1%
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