I applied for a remote position and stated a salary within their range. HR says since I'm remote, she will have to offer $15k less. Wtf? I live in a high-cost coastal CA city. HR ends the interview saying they'll get in touch with me by end of week and that they don't ghost candidates, and they ended up ghosting me. How bizarre. I would never expect this from a company like Western Digital. HR seemed very inexperienced and unprofessional.
I applied through a recruiter. I interviewed at WD (Bengaluru) in Feb 2026
Interview
Initially 3 rounds were scheduled. 2 Online (Elimination, means On-Site round will be conducted based on performance of online interviews), 1 On-Site (face-to-face). After 2 online rounds, recruiter informed me they planning to hire for Principal Engineer position (which was 2 level above where i was working) so they conducted one more online round before On-Site round.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Digital Design, IP Development, Coding. AMBA protocols.
I applied through an employee referral. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at WD (Taipei) in Feb 2022
Interview
Three level interview with free talk, kind and professional.
The focus of the interview is on how you think.
They value prompt and complete responses.
They are trying to see how you answer questions and how quickly you respond.
Principal Engineer applicants have rated the interview process at WD with 3 out of 5 (where 5 is the highest level of difficulty) and assessed their interview experience as 77% positive. To compare, the company-average is 61.4% positive. This is according to Glassdoor user ratings.
Candidates applying for Principal Engineer roles take an average of 24 days to get hired, when considering 14 user submitted interviews for this role. To compare, the hiring process at WD overall takes an average of 23 days.
Common stages of the interview process at WD as a Principal Engineer according to 14 Glassdoor interviews include:
Phone interview: 28%
One on one interview: 22%
Background check: 16%
Skills test: 13%
Group panel interview: 9%
Other: 6%
Personality test: 6%
Here are the most commonly searched roles for interview reports -