I applied through a recruiter. I interviewed at Tesla (Palo Alto, CA) in Mar 2021
Interview
I was reached out by an interviewer for the automation framework team (QA) and completed an OA.
Then, I was scheduled an interview with a software engineer manager.
The problem was that the interviewer was very unprofessional. He showed up late to the meeting, skipped my intro, and kept a condescending tone throughout the entire interview. It went about 30 minutes overtime, and it was clear to me that he was working on something else during my interview, as he would do things like take phone calls and loudly type on his keyboard. I tried to communicate my thought process while solving the problem and he would either ignore me or say "yeah do that then" while looking at something on his other screen. His only feedback was that he was very disappointed in my solution and that I was just trying random approaches and waiting to be lucky. Not sure why someone so unprofessional is interviewing for anyone - I'd hate to have that guy as my manager.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
https://leetcode.com/problems/letter-combinations-of-a-phone-number/
optimize on space complexity, which would need to be done using dfs,
I applied through a recruiter. I interviewed at Tesla (Fremont, CA) in Oct 2025
Interview
Recruiter reached out in linkedin. There are 2 rounds 1 technical which includes 1 Leet code style question, few technical questions on OOPs, microservices. Second round is with the hiring manager where he explained about the team and asked me about my previous experience and explain a project in depth.
I applied online. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Tesla (Palo Alto, CA) in Apr 2025
Interview
The process was two rounds, both on-site as I was already in the area.
- Technical Interview, design an API to do XYZ
- Hiring manager round, behavioural and resume deep dive
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Design an API to store some metrics with some example data
Software Engineer Intern applicants have rated the interview process at Tesla with 3.3 out of 5 (where 5 is the highest level of difficulty) and assessed their interview experience as 67% positive. To compare, the company-average is 55.1% positive. This is according to Glassdoor user ratings.
Candidates applying for Software Engineer Intern roles take an average of 28 days to get hired, when considering 22 user submitted interviews for this role. To compare, the hiring process at Tesla overall takes an average of 33 days.
Common stages of the interview process at Tesla as a Software Engineer Intern according to 22 Glassdoor interviews include:
Phone interview: 28%
Skills test: 22%
One on one interview: 17%
Group panel interview: 8%
Background check: 8%
Personality test: 8%
Presentation: 6%
Other: 3%
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