Arista Networks Software Engineer interview experience

SDE 1Posted Jan 2026 · Candidate report, summarized by Dataford

I went through an off-campus SDE 1-style interview loop that was heavily focused on core CS and a very concrete debugging exercise in C.

The setup was pretty straightforward: I answered questions centered on how memory and data structures behave, and the key task involved pointers and a struct-related situation where the program behavior needed to be understood and corrected.

The rest of the experience stayed in the same lane—debugging and fundamentals rather than lengthy algorithmic problem-solving. I came away feeling like the interview was testing whether I could reason carefully through low-level C details, not just recite theory.

What stood out to me most was how narrowly the technical evaluation was scoped around

Create a free Dataford account to unlock the full round-by-round breakdown, the questions asked and the outcome.

Read the full report Read the full report

Preparing for this interview?

Arista Networks Software Engineer interview guideThe full process, round by round, with the question bank Practice Software Engineer interview questionsReal questions from this role across companies All Arista Networks interview guidesEvery role we cover at this company