Zoox Machine Learning Engineer Role: Mastering Complex Coding Challenges

Software Engineering
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zoox | MachineLearningEng-PhD-FullTime | Interview Experience

Interview Date: Not specified
Result: Not specified
Difficulty: Not specified

Interview Process

  • Round 1: Coding

    • Question 1: Best Time to Buy and Sell Stock.
      • Follow-up: How to do it with multi-threading. (Split data into n chunks, find the maximum profit within each chunk and the maximum and minimum values, then use these to calculate the maximum profit across chunks and compare with the maximum profit between chunks.)
    • Question 2: Given an array, find four numbers that satisfy (y = mx + n). (The approach is to use two for loops to find all possible values of (mx) and store them in a hash map, then use two for loops to calculate (y - n) and check if it exists in the hash map.)
    • Question 3: Player distribution to teams. There are many players, and their nicknames can be repeated. How to assign them to teams to minimize duplicates? (This question doesn’t have much trick; just sort by nickname and assign duplicates to different teams.)

  • Round 2: Hiring Manager Technical Screening

    • Discussion about project experience.

  • Round 3: Math Questions

    1. How long can a 1TB hard drive store HD video?
    2. Given a six-sided die and an eight-sided die, what is the probability of rolling a 3? Given that a 3 was rolled, what is the probability that it was the six-sided die? What is the expected value of the next roll?
    3. What is the average number of times Friday the 13th occurs in a year? (Estimate)
    4. A plane is covered with circles of radius (r). What area do all the circles occupy?
    5. One ball has a radius 50% larger than another. How much larger is its volume?

  • Round 4: Behavioral Questions

    • Common behavioral questions.

  • Round 5: Machine Learning Skills

    • Part 1: ML trivia.
    • Part 2: Mainly focused on NumPy; distance from a trajectory to a point.

  • Round 6: Machine Learning System Design

    • Related to the position. My question was about using imitation learning to design an ego car’s right turn.

Technical Questions

  1. Best Time to Buy and Sell Stock (Array, Dynamic Programming)
  2. Probability and expectation questions related to dice.
  3. Area calculation of circles on a plane.
  4. Volume comparison of spheres with different radii.

Tips & Insights

  • Prepare for a mix of coding, mathematical reasoning, and machine learning system design questions.
  • Be ready to discuss your past projects and experiences in detail.
  • Practice common behavioral questions to articulate your experiences effectively.