I applied through college or university. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Qualcomm (San Diego, CA) in Aug 2016
Interview
meet with 5 engineers, each 45 mins, half time on past experience, and the other half on technical questions. the questions ranges from fundamental of DSP, random process, parameter estimation
I applied through a recruiter. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Qualcomm (Cambridge, England) in Jun 2025
Interview
There was an initial virtual meetup to go over the job role and walkthrough CV, followed by a two hour long technical interview.
Many aspects of DSP and software engineering were covered including, multi threading, rate matching and data structures.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
They provided code that demonstrated the use of a Mutex in a multithreading context and asked me to explain how it worked and the limitations of the system.
The interviewer is rude and blunt and arrogant, trying to poke holes in my resume. Some questions about the 5-stages CPU pipeline and memory barriers. In the job description, it says CPU/GPU/DSP engineering but when I ask the interviewers he said it's DSP only.
I applied through an employee referral. The process took 6 weeks. I interviewed at Qualcomm (San Diego, CA) in Feb 2019
Interview
Technical questions around a table, similar to white boarding sessions. Several different interviewers. Questions about DFT. DTFT. Spectrum analysis. Modulation schemes. BW and period. The interview took all day. The feedback was pretty timely.
DSP Engineer applicants have rated the interview process at Qualcomm with 2.8 out of 5 (where 5 is the highest level of difficulty) and assessed their interview experience as 17% positive. To compare, the company-average is 62.5% positive. This is according to Glassdoor user ratings.
Candidates applying for DSP Engineer roles take an average of 20 days to get hired, when considering 6 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 DSP Engineer according to 6 Glassdoor interviews include:
Phone interview: 44%
Group panel interview: 22%
One on one interview: 22%
Skills test: 11%
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