Roles they hire for
- DSP software engineer (SHARC, Blackfin)
- Precision data converter and BMS firmware engineer
What they emphasise
- DSP processors for audio and industrial signal chains
- Precision ADCs and DACs
- Battery and power management ICs
Brush up on
Fixed-point mathsDMA ping-pongSPI convertersFilter design basicsBMS
How the rounds usually run
A typical silicon vendor loop for embedded roles. Companies vary by team and seniority.
Online assessment or screen
- C output prediction, pointers and bit manipulation
- Digital logic and OS basics
- For experienced hires, often a recruiter and hiring-manager screen instead
Example: What does this print: an unsigned char set to 200 plus 100, printed as an integer?
Technical 1: C and embedded fundamentals
- Pointers, volatile, const, alignment and endianness
- Interrupts, stacks and memory layout
- Live C coding on bit fields, ring buffers or string handling
Example: Implement a lock-free single-producer, single-consumer ring buffer.
Technical 2: Drivers and architecture
- Designing a peripheral driver and its API
- DMA, caches and interrupt priorities
- RTOS internals and debugging stories
Example: Design a SPI driver that supports blocking, interrupt and DMA modes behind one API.
Technical 3 or hiring manager: system design and projects
- Deep dive into a past project and your design choices
- System-level trade-offs: power, memory, performance
- Sometimes a short presentation on a project
Example: Walk through the hardest bug you've fixed, and what you changed in the process afterwards.
HR and behavioural
- Motivation, teamwork and conflict
- Relocation, notice period and compensation
Example: Tell me about a time you disagreed with a design decision.
Practice questions
Original questions written for Analog Devices's focus areas, not leaked ones.
- Implement a fixed-point FIR filter in C. How do you avoid overflow?
- Design double-buffered DMA from a 24-bit SPI ADC at 192 kHz. What's your interrupt budget?
- How would you calibrate gain and offset of an ADC channel in production?
- Explain cell balancing in a battery pack and what the firmware decides.
- What's the difference between Q15 and floating point for an audio effect, in cost and accuracy?
Your prep playlist
Design rounds to practise
Themes are inferred from Analog Devices's public product lines.
Take an AI mock round styled on Analog Devices, with follow-ups that probe what you missed.
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