Waymo Software Engineer interview questions

After talking with recruiter, there was a 45 min technical initial round. After I passed this, I moved to an onsite interview of 2 technical rounds and 1 behavioral round, each one being 45 minutes and consecutive

Three interviews spanning the 2nd and 3rd week of May. Ultimately did not receive an offer but the experience was quite positive and an excellent learning experience, specially for a non-CS person looking to break into the world of autonomous driving. Ms. Song, a Senior Recruiter at Waymo was my point of contact and guide throughout the entire process. Interview 1: An informal project with a senior software engineer who gave some details on the newly formed Multi-System group and then some details regarding the role and responsibilities and learning opportunities of this internship position was described and finally closed with discussion of my Ph.D. project. Due to NDA, I am unable to share any further details. Interview 2: C++ coding and Algorithm. A code-along programming exercise involving graphs and use of a suitable graph traversal technique. Problem presented is very similar to Leetcode problems but requires some thinking. Interview 3: General domain knowledge test but this involved (unexpectedly) two additional C++ coding exercises. The interviewer was a Doctorate in Geometric computer vision from a very prestigious university. I probably choked in this part of the interview and was mostly my fault due to me not expecting implementation of vector products and a form of nearest neighbor problem. Due to NDA, cannot share any further details. Please note, none of the three C++ coding exercise assumed we had to get the code to compile and run, the test (that I think) was more about my command on the language, algorithms and ability to assess verbally/written problems and thinking fast in a high-pressure interview scenario. Also note that, both interviewer asked to write interface (simply fuctions) and expected the use of simpler data structures. I goofed by trying to use too much Modern C++ (smart pointers, vectors, classes).