Systems Programmer Interview Questions

1,360 systems programmer interview questions shared by candidates

The questions were quick to get tough, and the interviewer relied on both prepared and ad hoc questions. Most of the questions were drawn from my resume, asking detailed and complex questions regarding anything he could find. I began to wonder if some of the questions were even related to the job, and I even politely asked the interviewer if the questions were relevant to this particular job, but he tersely stated that he was the person asking the questions here! If the interviewer got the sense that something was on the resume that you haven't mastered, he was quick to hone in on that, and ask question after question in more detail. He then would get hostile or mildly belligerent if I didn't know the answer to the extent he would like. I got the feeling that the interviewer had a chip on his shoulder, perhaps even had some kind of complex, and that he was not going to be a pleasant person to work with. Perhaps he was doing this to test me, and weed out any interviewees who could not 'take the heat of the kitchen', but overall I was turned off by the experience and the bull-dog approach. The interview also went on for way too long, with constant follow-up questions until I was tired, and that seemed to excite him even more. Perhaps it was just my bad experience, but it's difficult for me to recommend anyone working with this group.
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Systems Specialist/Programmer

Interviewed at D.R. Horton

3.5
Jun 8, 2013

The questions were quick to get tough, and the interviewer relied on both prepared and ad hoc questions. Most of the questions were drawn from my resume, asking detailed and complex questions regarding anything he could find. I began to wonder if some of the questions were even related to the job, and I even politely asked the interviewer if the questions were relevant to this particular job, but he tersely stated that he was the person asking the questions here! If the interviewer got the sense that something was on the resume that you haven't mastered, he was quick to hone in on that, and ask question after question in more detail. He then would get hostile or mildly belligerent if I didn't know the answer to the extent he would like. I got the feeling that the interviewer had a chip on his shoulder, perhaps even had some kind of complex, and that he was not going to be a pleasant person to work with. Perhaps he was doing this to test me, and weed out any interviewees who could not 'take the heat of the kitchen', but overall I was turned off by the experience and the bull-dog approach. The interview also went on for way too long, with constant follow-up questions until I was tired, and that seemed to excite him even more. Perhaps it was just my bad experience, but it's difficult for me to recommend anyone working with this group.

Round-1: (technical) 1. Questions on serial port, GPIO. How do you debug if display didn't come up at boot. 2. Tell me a challenging issue debug you did. 3. Rotate nibbles in 32-bit integer. E.g: Input: 0xABCD1234, Output: 0x4321DCBA. 4. Given address of a node in a singly linked list, but head pointer not provided. How do you delete this node?
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Systems Software Engineer

Interviewed at NVIDIA

4.4
Sep 20, 2025

Round-1: (technical) 1. Questions on serial port, GPIO. How do you debug if display didn't come up at boot. 2. Tell me a challenging issue debug you did. 3. Rotate nibbles in 32-bit integer. E.g: Input: 0xABCD1234, Output: 0x4321DCBA. 4. Given address of a node in a singly linked list, but head pointer not provided. How do you delete this node?

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