Cadence Design Systems Software Engineer interview experience

I had an initial interview that mixed basic combinatorics-style questions with a general discussion about the company and the role. That part felt like it was trying to understand how I thought, not just what I knew.

After that conversation, I completed a take-home C++ assessment. It wasn’t described as insanely hard, but it required real effort to produce a clean solution rather than a quick sketch. The way I remember it, the work was less about brute difficulty and more about turning reasoning into correct, readable code.

As the later stages approached, the interviews kept an empathetic