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Zoox software engineer interview questions are typical of most technical interviews for software engineers at top tech companies. Working on cutting-edge technologies, interesting projects, and competitive compensation packages are some of the top reasons software engineers and developers choose to work at Zoox. Confirming the fact, the hirings at Amazon’s vehicle unit have grown from 1900 to 2200.
Zoox software engineer interview questions may not be as challenging as its parent or other FAANG+ companies but are typically similar to FAANG+ software interview questions. To this effect, answering Zoox software engineer interview questions requires considerable focused practice and preparation.
A subsidiary of Amazon, Zoox offers Mobility-as-a-Service offerings by developing unique autonomous robo-taxi vehicles. Understanding what Zoox does and the kind of technologies they work with is necessary to answer Zoox software engineering interview questions effectively, especially to showcase yourself as a good organizational fit.
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In this article, we cover:
- Zoox Software Engineer Interview Process
- Zoox Software Engineer Interview Questions on Coding
- Zoox Software Engineer Interview Questions on System Design
- Zoox Software Engineer Interview Questions on Behavioral Skills
- FAQs on Zoox Software Engineer Interview Questions
Zoox Software Engineer Interview Process
Zoox software engineer interview questions are divided into different interview rounds, Each focusing on Distinct knowledge areas.
Duration: 3 to 4 weeks
- Phone Screen
This involves the first-level screening, which will assess you on basic background and fitment parameters — your work experience, goals, salary expectations, expected date of joining, etc.
- Coding Problem
You will be required to solve a coding problem, typically in C++. This could be either a take-home or online exercise, either before or after the recruiter phone screen.
- Technical Phone Screen
This comprises up to two rounds of technical interviews with hiring managers in which you’ll solve up to two coding problems, of easy to medium difficulty, within 90 minutes. Your take-home coding exercise may also be discussed during this round.
- On-site Interviews
The on-site interviews are typically a day-long process comprising three rounds of interviews based on coding, technical, and behavioral skills.
Zoox Software Engineer Interview Questions on Coding
Zoox software engineer interview questions to assess coding skills tend to focus on these key skill and knowledge areas:
- C, C++
- Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) trivia and coding; Java theory
- Static and dynamic programming
- Math (usually asked as part of the on-site interviews): Questions on linear algebra, algebra, basic probability, geometry, logic, random math
- Problem-solving; Riddles and Brain-teasers (math and non-math based usually asked as part of the on-site interviews)
- Physics; Machine learning
- General programming
- C++ design; OOP Design; includes designing base cases and optimizing solutions
- Polymorphism, Inheritance, Concurrency, Compiler, Encapsulation
Zoox Software Engineer Interview Questions on Data Structures and Algorithms
Below are sample technical/coding interview questions on different data structures and algorithms and math topics to give you insights on how to prepare for Zoox software engineer interview questions.
Strings
- How many horses are there a string with multiple ‘neighs’ in it; Given a string (of horse sound ‘neigh’), determine the minimum number of horses possible. ‘Nneigheigh’ should return 2, ‘neighneigh’ returns 1.
- Given two strings , find the shortest edit distance to transform the first into the second.
Linked List
- Reverse a linked list.
- How will you convert a binary tree into a doubly-linked list?
Arrays
- Given a list of query words, return the number of words that are stretchy.
- Given two strings, S and T, find the minimum window in S, which will contain all the characters in T in complexity O(n).
Graphs
- Given a matrix of N rows and M columns. From m[i][j], we can move to m[i+1][j], if m[i+1]>m[i][j], or can move to m[i][j+1] if m[i][j+1]>m[i][j]. Print the longest path length if we start from (0,0).
Hash Tables
- What is the complexity of a hash table?
Recursion
- Given a binary tree, write a function to determine whether the tree is balanced.
Sort
- Implement the bubble sort algorithm.
Search
- Write a code to implement level order search in a binary tree.
Trees
- Given a binary tree, find the maximum path sum. The path may start and end at any node in the tree.
- Given a binary tree, write a recursive algorithm to print all parts from every leaf node to root node in the binary tree
Dynamic Programming
- Given a matrix and a target, return the number of non-empty submatrices that sum to the target.
- Given a matrix of rows x cols binary filled with 0s and 1s, find the largest rectangle containing only 1s and return its area.
Linear Algebra
- Give an example to find the eigenvalues of a matrix.
- What is Ax=b? When does it have a unique solution?
- When does the inverse of a diagonal matrix exist?
- What is an orthogonal matrix
Basics of Probability
- Differentiate between Bayesian probability and Frequentist probability
- What is a probability distribution?
- Given two fair dice, what is the probability of getting scores that equal sum to 4?
Geometry
- You are given two non-empty linked lists representing two non-negative integers. The digits are stored in reverse order, and each of their nodes contains a single digit. Add the two numbers and return them as a linked list.
Zoox Software Engineer Interview Questions — Technical
Some technical questions that have been asked as part of Zoox software engineer interview questions are:
- Find the area of a shape.
- Find the shortest distance between a line and a point in a 3D plane.
- How does a garbage collector work?
- Implement a basic calculator to evaluate a simple expression string. The expression may contain open ‘(‘ and closing ‘)’ parentheses, the plus ‘+’ and minus ‘-’ signs, non-negative integers, and empty spaces. You may assume the given expression is always valid.
- There are N lanes, and the speed of each lane is given. There are many cars in each lane. You are given the length of each car, its starting position, and its corresponding lane. There is a frog that can perform two functions — wait() or jump (). Find if there is a path for the frog to go from lane 1 to lane N without getting hit by any of the moving cars.
- There are ‘n’ cities connected by m flights. Each flight starts from the city ‘u’ and arrives at ‘v’ at a price ‘w.’ Now, given all the cities and flights, and the starting city ‘src,’ and the destination ‘dst,’ find the lowest price from ‘src’ to ‘dst’ with up to ‘k’ stops. If no such route exists, the output is -1.
- Write a pseudocode for Dijkstra's algorithm.
Zoox Software Engineer Interview Questions — Riddles and Brainteasers
You can expect riddles and brain teasers (typically math-based) as part of Zoox software engineer interview questions. These are aimed at assessing your problem-solving skills.
Some popular questions of this nature asked at a technical interview at top tech companies to help you understand what to expect are:
- A box has 12 red cards and 12 black cards. Another box has 24 red cards and 24 black cards. You want to draw two cards randomly from one of the two boxes, one card at a time. Which box has a higher probability of getting cards of the same color and why?
- Describe a sunset to a blind person.
- How do you measure exactly 4 gallons using a 3-gallon and a 5-gallon bucket?
- How can you tell if a given coin is biased?
- Why is it hotter in the summer?
- You are standing outside a room that has no windows. The room has three light bulbs and three switches outside of the room. Each switch controls one of the light bulbs. You can only enter the room one time. How do you find out what switch goes to which light bulb?
Zoox Software Engineer Interview Questions on C++ and OOPS
Some popular C++ and OOPs questions that can help you prepare for Zoox software engineer interview questions are:
- Explain why C++ is called OOPs.
- Explain polymorphism and its types in C++.
- List the features of OOPs in C++.
- What are ‘class’ and ‘object’ in C++?
- What is a storage class used in C++?
- What are encapsulation and inheritance in C++?
- Name popular OOPs languages.
- What are the main OOPs features?
- Differentiate between class and structure.
- Differentiate between polymorphism and inheritance.
- What is coupling?
- What is structured programming?
Zoox Software Engineer Interview Questions on Machine Learning (ML)
- Differentiate between variance and bias.
- Explain the Bayes’ Theorem.
- Explain your favorite algorithm.
- How is machine learning different from deep learning
- How will you perform cross-validation for a time series dataset?
- What is big data? Name some big data tools.
- What are some of the best data visualization libraries and tools?
- What data types does JSON support?
- What is the most valuable data for our business?
- Given two strings, A and B, of the same length n, find whether both strings can be cut at a common point such that the first part of string A and the second part of string B form a palindrome.
- Explaining hashtables.
- Differentiate between arrays and linked lists.
Zoox Software Engineer Interview Questions on System Design
Zoox candidates have been asked to design a system in C++ that is functional, i.e., it is compiled and can be run, given the input and output format. Some Zoox software engineer interview questions on system design include:
- Design a class
Some commonly-asked system OOP design questions asked at all top tech companies that Can help you prepare for your Zoox software engineer interview questions are:
- Design a lift system
- Design a URL shortening service like bit.ly
- Design a traffic control system
- Design A vending machine in Java
- How do you design a parking lot system
- How do you design an e-commerce website?
Zoox Software Engineer Interview Questions on Behavioral Skills
Why Zoox?
“Why Zoox?” or “Why do you want to work at Zoox?” are commonly asked Zoox software engineer interview questions. This question aims to assess your interest in working at Zoox, your understanding of the company and its competitors, and how your experience, skills, and goals align with Zoox’s business requirements and culture.
Some other sample Zoox software engineer interview questions to gauge your interpersonal and behavioral skills and assess your motivations for working at the company are:
- How is your job search?
- Tell me something about yourself that isn’t on your resume.
- What does Zoox value in its employees?
- How is Zoox different from its competitors?
- How long will you stay with Zoox if given an offer?
- Which Zoox team do you want to work with if given the opportunity?
- What biggest challenge do you think you’ll face as a Zoox software engineer?
- What do you think are the key success metrics for a software engineer?
- Have you attended craft conferences? If so, explain a recent experience.
- How do you handle difficult feedback?
- How do you demonstrate ownership?
- How would you handle situations where teammates don’t attend scheduled meetings?
- Tell me about a time you recovered from failure.
- Tell me about a time you demonstrated creativity.
- Tell me about a time you had to work on a project with a difficult teammate.
Besides the above questions, you should get a strong understanding of your potential role since Zoox software engineer interview questions are likely to be based on role requirements.
FAQs on Zoox Software Engineer Interview Questions
Q1. What are some software engineer questions for Zoox interviews?
Zoox software engineer interview questions feature questions on coding technical system design and behavioral skills. Expect questions based on C++, OOP, design, math, Java theory, static and dynamic programming, physics, problem-solving, and general programming.
Q2. What is the Zoox math interview?
Zoox software engineer interview questions on math are usually asked as part of the on-site interviews. You can expect questions on linear algebra, algebra, basic probability, geometry, logic, and random math.
Q3. How much do software engineers at Zoox earn?
The annual average software engineer salary at Zoox is $173,177 (glassdoor.com). However, this is only an indicative figure. Your offer will depend on how well you answer the Zoox software engineer interview questions and your negotiation skills during the hiring process.
Q4. How long does it take to get hired at Zoox?
Zoox software engineer interview questions are asked over multiple rounds of interviews during the Zoox interview process. The Zoox hiring process takes about three to four weeks to complete before making an offer.
Q5. Is it hard to get hired at Zoox?
While Zoox software engineers are not as challenging as FAANG interviews, Zoox software engineer interview questions are typical of FAANG software engineer interview questions. Hence, focused and structured interview prep is needed to nail Zoox technical interviews.
Upskill to Crack Your Next Tech Interview
While software interviews at Zoox are not as challenging as at FAANG, Zoox software engineer interview questions are popularly based on FAANG software engineer interview questions. To this end, interview prep is key to cracking the Zoox software engineer interview process.
Developing strong domain and problem-solving skills is key to answering even unseen problems at coding interviews.
At Interview Kickstart, we have helped many experienced engineers level up in their careers by teaching them our unique technical interview preparation techniques. One such method is developing problem-solving and coding expertise using power patterns. With this, our alums have been able to crack even the most challenging tech interviews and land lucrative offers at FAANG and other leading tech companies.
Our team of instructors and coaches, comprising 150+ tech leads and hiring managers from FAANG, offer first-hand training on hard skills such as data structures, algorithms, technical, problem-solving, system design, and domain-specific skills.
Join our free webinar to learn more about how you can effectively answer software engineer interview questions for Zoox or any other tech company of your choice to land the job you desire.
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