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Interviews

Interview kit · iv-702

Technical interview: Mateo Ruiz

Senior Robotics Software Engineer · Autonomy

Date
Wed, Sep 30
Time (ET)
2:00 PM – 3:00 PM
Length
1 h
Where
Video
Status
Completed

2:00 PM – 3:00 PM · 1 h

Timing

  1. 2:00 PM5 minIntroMei ChenDev Malhotra
  2. 2:05 PM40 minExerciseMei ChenDev Malhotra
  3. 2:45 PM10 minFollow-ups and trade-offsMei ChenDev Malhotra
  4. 2:55 PM5 minCandidate questionsMei ChenDev Malhotra

Interview kit

Questions by competency

Rated 1–4 on the scorecard

Technical interview: exercises

  • Implement a grid planner with dynamic obstacles; discuss complexity.
  • A robot oscillates at an aisle intersection. Walk through your debugging.
  1. 01

    Robotics software design

    Breaks a planning problem into clean, testable modules.

    • Design right-of-way rules for 40 robots and human pickers in one aisle network.
    • How would you structure a planner so it can be tested without a robot?
  2. 02

    C++ and systems

    Writes safe, fast code; reasons about memory, threads and real-time limits.

    • Where would you expect latency in a 50 Hz planning loop, and how would you find it?
    • Walk through a memory or threading bug you shipped and fixed.
  3. 03

    Debugging on hardware

    Finds root causes from logs, bags and a robot that won't behave.

    • A robot oscillates at an aisle intersection. Walk through your debugging.
    • What do you look for first in a field log?
  4. 04

    Collaboration

    Works through disagreement; explains trade-offs to non-specialists.

    • Tell us about a design disagreement and how it was resolved.
    • How do you explain a trade-off to a customer or an operator?
  5. 05

    Ownership

    Follows problems into the field and closes the loop.

    • Describe a problem you followed from a bug report all the way into the field.
    • What did you do after the last incident you were part of?

2 of 2 in

Submitted scorecards

Strong yes

1

Yes

1

No

0

Strong no

0

  • Mei ChenStaff Robotics Engineer · Sep 30Strong yes
    Robotics software design
    C++ and systems
    Debugging on hardware
    Collaboration
    Ownership

    Finished the planner with time to spare and found the edge case in the obstacle update himself.

  • Dev MalhotraEngineering Manager, Autonomy · Sep 30Yes
    Robotics software design
    C++ and systems
    Debugging on hardware
    Collaboration
    Ownership

    Strong design instincts. Would like to see more depth on real-time constraints in the loop.