Cadence Interview Experience | Set 2
Question Details
I applied through cadence home - careers -. I uploaded my linkedin link as resume. I got a call within a week and was asked to give a telephonic round.
Round 1 Telephonic...
Full Details
I applied through cadence home -> careers ->. I uploaded my linkedin link as resume. I got a call within a week and was asked to give a telephonic round.
Round 1 Telephonic 1. Tell me about yourself 2. What is the difference between C and C++ 3. Is a C program faster than a C++ compiled program. 4. What is UNION in C? 5. What all type of sorting algorithms do you know? 6. What does the term “object oriented programming mean?” 7. What is the difference between overloading and overriding? 8. About my present work. I was then called for face to face interviews; I did not delay and fixed it the day after today.
Round 2 F2F 1. What does your current company’s software do? About the current company? 2. Compilation of a C/C++ code. He gave me a dummy program. He then asked me to use #ifdef #endif in the header files, then asked its uses. 3. Different segments of memory. Where all can a variable be allocated? 4. There is a stack where push and pop operation are happening. At any point of time user will query secondMin(). This API should return second minimum present in the stack. 5. Given a number, tell number of bits set in the number in its binary representation. Ex. N = 5, Ans – 2 (101 has 2 1’s in it) 6. Reversing a string recursively, iteratively. He then asked me to rewind the whole stack or trace the recursive version for examples – “hello” and “ABCD”. 7. Cell padding concept in struct/class. 8. Traversal in a tree. Made me code iterative and recursive version of in-order traversal.
Round 3 F2F 1. Difference between static and dynamic bindings. 2. Concept of virtual function in C++. How is a vtable maintained? What are its entries?
Example code where virtual function is used. 3. What is auto, volatile variables? Scopes of variables. 4. References in C++. 5. What is a static function in a C++ class? Why is it used? How to call a static function of class from any part of the code. 6. Given an array of numbers (+ve and –ve), tell the subarray with the highest sum. 7. Height of a tree, diameter of a tree.
Round 4 F2F (Manager/Director round) 1. Allocate a 2-D array using C/C++. 2. Why does a program crash? Valgrind issues etc. 3. Puzzle: 100 floor building and 2 eggs given, find the minimum/maximum number of trys required to find the floor where the egg will break. The answer I gave was 19. He asked me to normalize the solution; we then came up with answer 13. 4. Puzzle: Jumbled N pens and N caps, all caps separated from their pens, all pens have some thickness properties. How would you cap all the pens? 5. Given a dictionary, how can you represent it in memory? What will be the worst case complexity of a search done on the DS designed? 6. About my current work
Round 5 HR 1. Why do you want to leave your current company? 2. What do you know about us?
About This Question
This is a reported interview question from a cadence india interview for a swe role (director level) during the phone screen round reported in 2021.
It covers the following topics: Oop, Trees, Strings, Sql, Stack Queue, Recursion, Sorting, Networking, Hash Table, Arrays, Stack .
About Cadence India Interview Reports
This question was reported by a candidate who interviewed at Cadence India. LeakCode aggregates interview reports from 10+ sources, including 1Point3Acres, Glassdoor, LeetCode Discuss, Blind, Reddit, Indeed, and Nowcoder. Each report is translated where necessary, deduplicated against existing entries, and tagged by company, role, round type, and reporting date.
Use this question as one calibration data point, not a memorization target. Companies typically rotate their question pools every 2-4 months; the exact wording of a 2024 question may differ from what you encounter today. The underlying pattern, difficulty level, and follow-up depth at Cadence India are the higher-signal extractions to take from this report.
For broader preparation context, the Cadence India interview process typically includes a recruiter screen, one or two technical phone screens, and a 4-5 round on-site loop covering coding, system design (at L4+ levels), and behavioral. Reports tagged on LeakCode show the round-by-round distribution and typical difficulty calibration. To browse questions filtered by round type and seniority, use the company hub linked above.
How To Practice This Type of Question
Solve similar problems on LeetCode under timed conditions (25-35 minutes per medium difficulty). The goal is pattern recognition: recognize the underlying technique (sliding window, two-pointer, BFS, memoized recursion, etc.) within 60-90 seconds of reading. Strong candidates verbalize their hypothesis out loud before coding, then iterate based on feedback. Weak candidates dive into implementation immediately, lose time on the wrong approach, and run out of time for follow-ups.
Companies update their question pools every 2-4 months. The exact wording of any given question may have been retired by the time you interview. Focus your prep on the pattern, not the specific problem. The patterns that appear in Cadence India reports consistently are the ones worth investing in; one-off niche problems are not.
During Your Cadence India Round
Apply the standard interview round template: clarify requirements (2-3 minutes), state your approach out loud and confirm direction with the interviewer (3-5 minutes), code with narration (15-25 minutes), test with concrete examples including edge cases (5 minutes), discuss optimization or trade-offs if time permits (5 minutes). This template is universally accepted across FAANG and adjacent companies; deviating from it produces weaker interviewer feedback signal.
The single most predictive failure mode in Cadence India reports tagged "no hire": not asking clarifying questions. Interviewers are explicitly trained to weight this. Strong candidates ask 3-5 clarifying questions even on problems that look obvious; weak candidates dive into code immediately. The clarifying-question check is often the first signal recorded in the interviewer's written notes.