This time I want to share with you a participant's MathWorks VO full process interview experience. Four rounds of VO down, finally successfully get the offer!
MathWorks interviews are still different from the traditional big factories, not only examining coding, but also attaching great importance to the fundamentals of mathematics and science, signal processing, scientific computation, which are closely related to the field knowledge of MATLAB products. For students preparing for this type of position, it is not enough to just brush up on questions, but to combine mathematical and scientific skills with engineering thinking.
With real-time remote assistance from our programhelp, this student answered the questions from coding to system design to behavioral interview in a smooth and natural way. The interviewer nodded frequently, and finally he got the job without any doubt! Here is a detailed review.
Overview of the interview process
Round 1: Technical Phone Interview (Algorithms + Engineering Thinking)
Round 2: Programming (MathWorks flavored questions)
Round 3: System Design / Technical Deep Dive (Distributed Computing Systems)
Round 4: Behavioral Interview / Managerial Interview (Research + Teamwork Stories)
Each round is about 45 minutes to 1 hour, the overall pace is compact, the interviewer will follow your answer to continue to ask for details, so the preparation should not only be able to do the question, but also have the idea of extension.
Interview Realistic Scenario Reproduction
There are four rounds of 45 minutes to an hour each throughout the VO: the Technical Phone Side, the Programming Side, the System Design/Technical Deep Dive, and the Behavioral Side. Each round has its own characteristics, which are expanded upon below.
Round 1 - Technical Telephone Interviews
The questions were not very tricky, but we could see the direction of the study. For example, when asked how to search and sort large amount of data quickly, the students were reminded to analyze it from time complexity, space complexity, and trade-off in practical engineering. Another question is the difference between matrix and sparse matrix, many people will only stay in the "sparse matrix can save memory", but the students answered the question by adding the storage format (CSR/CSC), applicable scenarios (such as scientific computing, graph computation), and the optimization of MATLAB itself on sparse matrices, which makes the level a lot higher. The interviewer nodded his head at that time and passed the first round easily.
Round 2 - Coding Interview
The style of the questions is very MathWorks-like, and they are designed to fit the core MATLAB application. The first question is to find local maxima in a very large matrix, the matrix size is so large that m, n are more than 10^6, and it is not possible to brute-force store and traverse it directly.
With our prompting, the trainee used sliding window together with in-place operation to reduce memory overhead, and also added the idea of parallel chunking and multithreading optimization, which made the interviewer's eyes shine.
The second question was about real-time signal processing, where noise has to be filtered out of the data stream, outliers have to be detected, and the latency has to be low. The student thought of moving average at first, but we reminded him to combine circular buffer to do real-time processing, plus z-score to detect outliers, and finally added the engineering perspective of "filtering delay and stability need to be weighed", which instantly made the answer look a notch higher in professionalism.
The third question is sensor network optimization, where you have to cover all areas with the least number of sensors, and also have redundant coverage, while keeping the communication cost as low as possible. This question is essentially a morphing of an ensemble coverage problem. The student was a bit stuck at first, so we gave him tips to model the problem as a graph first, and then answer it with a greedy approximation, and also added that the balance between coverage redundancy and communication cost should be taken into account in the actual project, and the idea became clear at once. All three questions were solved successfully, and the round was passed very beautifully.
The third round is system design, which is very "hardcore". The question asked the students to design a MATLAB distributed computing system, which can submit tasks, check progress, retry after failure, and also can automatically expand and contract capacity. We took the students step by step to clarify the architecture, from the scheduler, work nodes to the monitoring module, to explain the responsibilities of each component. For example, the scheduler is responsible for task allocation, the worker nodes actually execute tasks, and the monitoring module is used for progress tracking and error handling. When the interviewer asked about the fault tolerance mechanism, the participant went on to talk about the automatic migration and retry strategy for task failures; when it came to scaling up and scaling down, he added that the number of nodes is dynamically adjusted according to the task volume. When the interviewer asked about the features of MATLAB itself, the student directly mentioned the parallel toolbox and distributed array mechanism. This answer was very appropriate and showed his familiarity with MathWorks products, and the interviewer's attitude became very appreciative at once.
Round 4 - Behavioral and Managerial Interviews
This round centered on teamwork and problem-solving experiences. The interviewer asked two classic questions, one is "Tell me a story of how you solved a technical problem with an innovative method", and the other is "How do you communicate and cooperate with the team". Before the interview, we helped the students to organize their research and internship experiences into short stories and answer them according to the idea of "finding problems → innovative solutions → teamwork". For example, when he encountered a performance bottleneck in his research project, he proposed to improve the algorithm with a more efficient data structure, and in the end, he not only solved the problem, but also shared it with his team, which led to the improvement of efficiency together. The whole answer was confident and smooth, and the interviewer nodded frequently. At this point, all four rounds of VOs have been taken, and the offer has come naturally.
MathWorks Interview Preparation Highlights
MathWorks interviews are really different from the usual big companies. What it values most is a solid foundation in mathematics and science, and whether you can speak clearly about math, signal processing, and scientific computing in the context of engineering applications. There are a few key points when preparing:
- First, algorithmic problems should be brushed, but not only at the level of brushing, but also to be able to extend from the complexity, memory, parallel optimization and other perspectives;
- Second, you need to catch up on your knowledge of number theory and signal processing, especially matrix calculations, filtering, and modeling;
- Third, the system design should ideally be linked to MATLAB's products, and if you can mention toolkits and distributed mechanisms, it will make the interviewer feel that you are a good fit for the position;
- Finally, behavioral interviews should be prepared ahead of time with project experiences, structuring the story with logic and highlights.
Key enablers to stop getting stuck in interviews
Many students actually have a good foundation in mathematics and science, but they tend to get nervous or get stuck in the details when answering questions in the interview. In the OA, written test and VO process, many details often determine success or failure.Programhelphelp students to provide a full range of coaching and assistance services: whether it is HackerRank, cattle guest network or Codesignal platform of online assessment, can ensure that the test cases 100% pass; encountered cardinal points, real-time voice reminder and ideas point of view, so that you stay calm in the key links; behavioral surface, project experience, system design and other links, we help students to organize the highlights, and enhance the logic and persuasiveness of the answer.
For students who want to go directly to the interview, we provide professional interview services, through the camera transfer and voice technology, to achieve a high degree of reproduction and cooperation, so that you can successfully complete the interview, straight to the Offer. the whole process is safe and seamless, simulation in advance, tacit cooperation, to ensure that each round of steady play.
From OA to interview, to contract negotiation, we will escort you through the whole process until you get a satisfactory offer. whether it's FAANG, SDE, Quant positions in big factories, or international students' entrance interviews, we can provide you with targeted solutions, so that you can make less detours and get through the gate efficiently.
