Interview Experiences

Real candidates, real loops: every round, what was asked, and how it ended.

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13 stories

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TeslaSoftware Engineer
Jul 2026

Live NumPy Coding on 3D Plane Fitting

Second round for the sensing engineer position. The interviewer had me write everything in numpy the whole time. I hadn't prepared for that at all and couldn't really write it, and after 10 minutes I already didn't want to keep going with the interview, but the interviewer kept pulling me along and dragged it out for the full time anyway. First question: given a list of 3D points and a plane repr…

Technical Screen0
TeslaSoftware Engineer
Reported Jul 2026

Tesla Software Engineer ML coding interview

My first real technical step was an ML coding interview. I had to implement a standard machine-learning algorithm with numpy and explain core ML fundamentals. The prompt was not obscure, but its details were tricky enough to test whether I understood basics rather than only buzzwords. It felt easy overall because the subject was fundamental and the scope was clear. Still, I had to be precise with…

Technical Screen0
TeslaSoftware Engineer
Reported Jul 2026

Tesla Software Engineer interview: Python and RAG depth

After a recruiter call, my profile moved forward to two technical interviews. The role was associated with Python, RAG, and AI, and the interviews seemed designed to find out whether my experience could support that knowledge. Surface familiarity was not enough. I had to give concrete reasoning grounded in what I had done, and the very difficult format demanded that I demonstrate understanding qu…

Other0
TeslaSoftware Engineer
Reported Jul 2026

Tesla Software Engineer interview: rushed transient heat transfer question

The technical interview felt jarring from the start. The interviewer was not very conversational and moved quickly from questions about my resume into transient heat transfer. They first asked for specific details from what I had written, then gave the heat-transfer question in a way that felt rushed. I was trying to catch up with the pace and tone instead of settling into a normal problem-solvin…

0
TeslaSoftware Engineer
Reported Jul 2026

Software Engineer interview at Tesla: gasket tolerance

Before the interview, I completed and submitted a take-home test. The interview then opened with a problem that sounded simple, involving a gasket and an L bracket compressing that gasket. The interviewer treated it as straightforward, but I overthought the calculation and missed the correct tolerance limit. The subject itself was not complicated. The precision of the calculation was what mattere…

Take-home Project0
TeslaSoftware Engineer
Reported Jul 2026

Tesla Software Engineer interview: resume detail and controls fundamentals

Most of the interview started as a resume overview, then became technically detailed. The interviewer repeatedly returned to what I had written and asked me to explain it, as if they were checking that I understood the details rather than merely listing them. The technical questions covered PID and closed-loop control systems, including sensors. The hardest part was connecting those fundamentals…

Technical Screen0
TeslaSoftware Engineer
Reported Jul 2026

Tesla Software Engineer interview: algorithms, behavior, and system design

After a phone recruiter screen, I had two Tesla rounds. The first was LeetCode-style and focused on algorithms and problem solving. The interviewer cared about whether I could reason through the problem end to end, not simply arrive at an answer. The second round mixed behavioral questions and system design. We discussed how I work, how I would architect a scalable solution, and how I think about…

OfferTechnical Screen0
TeslaSoftware Engineer
Reported Jul 2026

Tesla Software Engineer interview

Two technical managers interviewed me, and the conversation became intense right away. They asked about my motivation as well as technical and behavioral topics. One technical question concerned a motor module and required more rigor than I expected. The behavioral questions asked how I would handle production-engineering difficulties, when problems stack up and work still has to ship. I found th…

Technical Screen0
TeslaSoftware Engineer
May 2026

Director BQ, Then a Randomly Picked LeetCode Coding Round

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In progressTechnical ScreenXP0
TeslaMachine Learning Engineer
Feb 2026

Rejected After Two Technical Rounds

The first round was with the interviewer. He gave a quick rundown of his background, then asked how to model other agents in the simulation. The coding part was based on an input of shape [batch, num_waypoint, 2], and I had to compute a suffix sum, with output shape [batch, num_waypoint]. I forget the exact follow-up question after that... let me think about it more. The second round was with the…

RejectedTechnical Screen0
TeslaBackend EngineerSenior+
Jan 2026

Four Onsite Rounds, All Staff-Level Interviewers

Phone screen, 45 min: design a ticket-master system. We went deep on how to prevent double booking. The interviewer also cared a lot about UX — what the API returns, what seat map the frontend shows once it gets that response, etc. Onsite: each round was 45 min. The email told me who the interviewer was and their title, but not which round would be system design vs. past-experience. It was schedu…

Onsite0
TeslaSoftware Engineer
Sep 2025

No Extra Memory Allowed

I'm finally getting around to keeping a promise — sharing my phone screen experience for Tesla Dojo. The coding difficulty was medium-to-hard, but the bar for detail was very high. Hope this is useful for anyone else interviewing for Dojo. The interviewer showed up a little late, and jumped straight into coding with barely any small talk. Tesla's efficiency is really something. You're given a lis…

Technical Screen0
TeslaMachine Learning Engineer
Jul 2025

Recruiter Changed the Format Without Notice

When I first got this role, the recruiter told me the technical interview would be 70 minutes long, covering Leetcode coding, LangChain, and MLflow. I prepared accordingly — I ground through a good number of Leetcode problems and specifically went and studied a lot of LangChain material. Then I got the official interview email, and the interview had turned into 45 minutes, with no details about t…

Technical Screen0

What are interview experiences?

An interview experience is a candidate's own account of a hiring loop — not a question bank entry. It tells you the shape of the process: how many rounds there were, what each round actually tested, how long the gaps between them ran, and what the recruiter said at the end. That context is the part a question list cannot give you.

How to read them

Weight recent write-ups more heavily — interview loops change, often within a year. Read several for the same company and role rather than one: a single account tells you what one interviewer asked, while five tell you what the bar is. Note the outcome badge too, since a rejection write-up usually explains the gap far more precisely than an offer one.

Share your own

Every published experience earns 50 XP, and each of the first 3 likes it receives in a day earns you 10 XP more. Likes must come from established accounts; like-for-like swaps and likes from your own second account are not paid. Write it while the details are fresh — the round order, the exact prompts, and how much time you were given are what the next reader needs.

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