Skip to contentSkip to footer

Systems Engineer Interviews

Salaries
Interviews

Systems Engineer Interview Questions

Systems engineers work closely with systems analysts to maintain a company's IT system by developing the operating systems that run computers. Expect to be quizzed on a variety of technical questions that will test your knowledge of how computer systems work. Employers prefer candidates with a bachelor's degree in an engineering field and previous experience with technology.

Top Systems Engineer Interview Questions & How to Answer

Question 1

Question #1: Describe a previous systems engineering project you worked on. What was your role?

How to answer
How to answer: This question gives you a chance to talk about your experience and accomplishments. If possible, talk about a project that you completed before the deadline or one where you exceeded the client's expectations. Use numbers and statistics to quantify your accomplishments.
Question 2

Question #2: Have you created a disaster recovery plan for a company? What are the most important factors in a successful plan?

How to answer
How to answer: Systems engineers often create backup systems and disaster recovery plans designed to survive a variety of different scenarios. Talk about how disaster recovery plans should consider a business's physical and electronic assets and its ability to deliver customer service after damage from storms, fires, or other events.
Question 3

Question #3: Imagine you're working on a major project, and there's a conflict between two technical teams. How would you resolve it?

How to answer
How to answer: Systems engineers often work with multiple technology teams, and leadership skills like resolving disagreements are important. Showcase these skills by discussing how you would handle a personal disagreement between two coworkers, a conflict about business procedures or decisions, and other problems. You can also talk about arguments that you helped resolve between colleagues at your previous job.

60,559 systems engineer interview questions shared by candidates

Why do i want to work for Excalibur, why am i leaving my current position. reviewed what help desk system they use and i sued.she asked me in the end if i had any experiance with cabling and building data centers, i told her yes to everything, i can do all of that.

Systems Administrator

Interviewed at Excalibur Miretti Group

2.5★
May 11, 2016

Why do i want to work for Excalibur, why am i leaving my current position. reviewed what help desk system they use and i sued.she asked me in the end if i had any experiance with cabling and building data centers, i told her yes to everything, i can do all of that.

First they'll draw a huge diagram on the whiteboard with many, many different technologies to describe their stack. This is mainly a distraction and serves only to confuse you so you have to ferret out the important parts of the question, which was something like: We have a new commenting system that is being announced live on television by our CEO and when it is announced we will hit the button and launch it while they are on live TV and we absolutely can not roll back or fall over when it goes live. It is being tested by QA and they took a handful of links from the logs and replayed them in a loop many times very quickly to load test and everything seems okay. If you are the Head Of Engineering and your job rests on the successful deploy of this commenting system without issue. Are you satisfied with this QA and if not what would you do differently? (The commenting system is a black box implemented by our parent company by Java PhDs who are unavailable to get any real information out of other than "everything will work.")
avatar

Systems Engineer

Interviewed at Huffington Post

3.7★
Jan 16, 2017

First they'll draw a huge diagram on the whiteboard with many, many different technologies to describe their stack. This is mainly a distraction and serves only to confuse you so you have to ferret out the important parts of the question, which was something like: We have a new commenting system that is being announced live on television by our CEO and when it is announced we will hit the button and launch it while they are on live TV and we absolutely can not roll back or fall over when it goes live. It is being tested by QA and they took a handful of links from the logs and replayed them in a loop many times very quickly to load test and everything seems okay. If you are the Head Of Engineering and your job rests on the successful deploy of this commenting system without issue. Are you satisfied with this QA and if not what would you do differently? (The commenting system is a black box implemented by our parent company by Java PhDs who are unavailable to get any real information out of other than "everything will work.")

Viewing 791 - 800 interview questions

Glassdoor has 60,559 interview questions and reports from Systems engineer interviews. Prepare for your interview. Get hired. Love your job.