Ciena Software Engineer interview experience

The whole thing centered on my background and how well I could explain the technical choices behind it. I had to walk through my projects in depth, including the design patterns I used and why I used each one—what problem I was trying to solve and how the solution took shape.

A big part of the interview dove into low-level fundamentals: stack and heap behavior, along with pointers and function pointers. I remember spending time clarifying how those concepts fit together, and the interviewer kept steering me back to the mechanics rather than just high-level descriptions. It felt like a test