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Design Engineer Interview Questions

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Design Engineer Interview Questions

A design engineer evaluates and improves different aspects of a product, such as safety and functionality. When interviewing for this job, expect to answer scenario-based and technical questions. Get ready to speak about your experience with product design, communication, and attention to detail.

Top Design Engineer Interview Questions & How To Answer

Question 1

Question #1: What types of software and devices have you used during your career as a design engineer?

How to answer
How to answer: A design engineer should be skilled in industry-specific software and devices. Demonstrate to the hiring manager that you have technology expertise by specifying the computer-aided design (CAD) and computer-aided engineering (CAE) software you use. Additionally, describe any technologies specific to your design engineering career, for example, the MOSFET circuit design for a circuit design engineer position.
Question 2

Question #2: How do you manage your time when working on several design engineering projects?

How to answer
How to answer: Address this personality-based question by identifying the techniques you would use to organize your time in this scenario. For example, you can discuss creating timelines, scheduling and prioritizing tasks, and meeting deadlines.
Question 3

Question #3: While working on a design engineering project, you experience a setback. How do you stay on track?

How to answer
How to answer: With this question, the hiring manager is evaluating your motivational abilities. Talk about a strategy you use to stay motivated. Try to give an experience-based answer, such as the self-motivation technique you used when you misunderstood a design request parameter provided by the research and development team.

31,075 design engineer interview questions shared by candidates

There were some general questions related to my projects and my experiences. Some technical questions that I can remember are: 1) Given a diagram of some basic arithmetic operations and asked to simplify it. Basically, you try to reduce the area by utilizing one less multiplier. A follow up question was given the latency for each operation and ask how to improve the latency. The answer is basically to pipeline the combinational circuit by using flip flops to split into to stages. 2) A basic timing question regarding the max frequency the flip-flop can operate at given the various D-Q, C-Q, hold and t-combination timings. Then a follow up question asks if one of the time is changed, how would it affect the circuit. Basically the answer is to reduce the frequency to allow correct operation. Another follow up was if the hold time is not satisfied, would changing the clock frequency help. The answer to that question is no and to get that answer you need to draw the timing diagram and see that changing the frequency does not help. 3) Another question involving multiple flip-flops and asked to draw timing diagram of various points in the circuit. 4) A buffer over-flow problem and how to solve it. Basically, you had to figure out that the input side of buffer is writing at a higher rate than the reading side of the buffer. Basically, you had to delay the sending function for a period of time after sending certain amount of packets of data.
avatar

Hardware Design Engineer

Interviewed at Evertz Microsystems

3.1★
Apr 11, 2013

There were some general questions related to my projects and my experiences. Some technical questions that I can remember are: 1) Given a diagram of some basic arithmetic operations and asked to simplify it. Basically, you try to reduce the area by utilizing one less multiplier. A follow up question was given the latency for each operation and ask how to improve the latency. The answer is basically to pipeline the combinational circuit by using flip flops to split into to stages. 2) A basic timing question regarding the max frequency the flip-flop can operate at given the various D-Q, C-Q, hold and t-combination timings. Then a follow up question asks if one of the time is changed, how would it affect the circuit. Basically the answer is to reduce the frequency to allow correct operation. Another follow up was if the hold time is not satisfied, would changing the clock frequency help. The answer to that question is no and to get that answer you need to draw the timing diagram and see that changing the frequency does not help. 3) Another question involving multiple flip-flops and asked to draw timing diagram of various points in the circuit. 4) A buffer over-flow problem and how to solve it. Basically, you had to figure out that the input side of buffer is writing at a higher rate than the reading side of the buffer. Basically, you had to delay the sending function for a period of time after sending certain amount of packets of data.

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