Apple New Grad Accessories Software QA Engineer Interview Experience — A Reorganization Delay and Onsite Rejection

Apple·Accessories Software QA Engineer·Mar 2026
OnsiteHR ScreenTechnical ScreenNew GradRejectedmedium

In the first interview, I talked with HR about the role being in San Diego and confirmed that the role would sponsor my OPT.

In the second interview, I talked with the hiring manager about my previous QA projects. [I'd done a year as a QA intern and had basically done all the full-time work once already.]

Then I was ghosted for three weeks.

After that, they called me back and said a reorganization had delayed the interviews.

They invited me to headquarters for an onsite.

  1. It started with a six-person interview, mostly about my previous projects. I had to prepare a PowerPoint presentation, something like a portfolio, and the team asked lots of questions about the projects.

    a. You did benchmarking and regression testing in your previous project. How did you address the problems in each kind of testing, and how did you optimize them?

    b. This benchmark used a lot of resources. After taking it over, how did you optimize its use of HPC resources?

    This took about an hour.

  2. After that, there was another interview with team members. Two of them asked me a palindrome question. Then they asked how I'd score an imperfect palindrome: what aspects I'd use to evaluate how well a string matched a palindrome, and what weight I'd give each aspect. [System design.]

  3. The last interview was with two managers. After the reorganization, it seemed that two managers jointly managed two teams. This was mostly about my previous experience, the IOP testing I do in my current job, and things like that.

  4. The next day, I interviewed with the San Diego team. They asked a map question, and I only gave a rough answer... I figure this was the round that cost me the job...

Overall, I think the first three rounds went pretty well, but I hadn't practiced enough coding problems for the last one... and I was rejected...

Published

Curated and edited by PracHub

Practice the questions from this interview

Discussion

Sign in to join the discussion. The author is notified of every comment.

Loading comments…

Interview at a glance

Company
Apple
Role
Accessories Software QA Engineer
Level
New Grad
Rounds
HR Screen → Technical Screen → Onsite
Outcome
Rejected
Difficulty
medium
Interview date
Mar 2026
Questions from this interview
2 questions

Real Apple interview experiences

First-hand reports from Apple candidates — the rounds, the questions they were asked, and how it went.

All 34 Apple interview experiences