Cisco interview process (2026)

Round-by-round breakdown of the Cisco software engineering interview across 3 levels and 12 rounds: interview mode, sample questions, and worked solutions.

Cisco salary & ratings · All interview processes

Software Engineer (early-career / Grade 3-4, campus & off-campus FTE + intern)

Difficulty: Medium · Timeline: ~2-4 weeks · Recommended prep: 6-10 weeks · Cooldown: ~6-12 months

  1. Round 0: Online Assessment (HackerRank)

    Assessment · 60-90 min · difficulty 2/5 · elimination round

    Mode of interview: Online assessment

    Sample question: Rotate Image — Given an n x n matrix, rotate it 90 degrees clockwise in place. Read n then the n*n values row by row; print the rotated matrix.

  2. Round 1: Technical Round 1

    Onsite · 45-90 min · difficulty 2/5 · elimination round

    Mode of interview: Onsite or virtual onsite interview

    Sample question: House Robber — Given an array of non-negative integers representing money in each house, return the maximum you can rob without taking two adjacent houses. Read n then n values; print the max.

  3. Round 2: Technical Round 2

    Onsite · 40-70 min · difficulty 3/5 · elimination round

    Mode of interview: Onsite or virtual onsite interview

    Sample question: Spiral Matrix — Given an m x n matrix, return all its elements in spiral order (clockwise from the top-left). Read m and n then the matrix; print the spiral traversal.

  4. Round 3: Managerial / Executive Round

    Behavioral · 40-60 min · difficulty 2/5 · elimination round

    Mode of interview: Live behavioral interview

  5. Round 4: HR / ETR (Compensation) Round

    Offer · 5-15 min

    Mode of interview: Offer discussion

Senior Software Engineer (experienced / lateral)

Difficulty: Medium · Timeline: ~2-3 weeks · Recommended prep: 6-10 weeks · Cooldown: ~6-12 months

  1. Round 0: Recruiter / Application Screen

    Phone · ~45 min · difficulty 1/5 · elimination round

    Mode of interview: Remote phone or video interview

  2. Round 1: Online Assessment (HackerRank, coding)

    Assessment · ~60-90 min · difficulty 2/5 · elimination round

    Mode of interview: Online assessment

    Sample question: Longest Palindromic Substring — Given a string, return the longest contiguous substring that is a palindrome. Read one line; print the longest palindromic substring (any one if tied).

  3. Round 2: Technical Interview Loop (2-3 rounds)

    Onsite · ~60 min · difficulty 3/5

    Mode of interview: Onsite or virtual onsite interview

    Sample question: LRU Cache — Design an LRU cache with O(1) get and put and a fixed capacity, evicting the least-recently-used key on overflow. Read capacity, then q operations ('put k v' or 'get k'); print each get result (-1 if absent) in order.

  4. Round 3: System Design (team-dependent)

    System_design · ~45-60 min · difficulty 3/5

    Mode of interview: Live system design interview

    Sample question: Design a URL Shortening Service — Design a TinyURL-style service: generating short unique keys (base-62 counter vs hashing), the redirect read path, storage/sharding for hundreds of millions of mappings, caching hot links, and handling custom aliases and expiry.

  5. Round 4: HR / Compensation

    Offer · 15-30 min

    Mode of interview: Offer discussion

Principal Engineer

Difficulty: Hard · Timeline: Not separately documented; expect a longer multi-panel loop · Recommended prep: Deep architecture/system-design and staf · Cooldown: Unknown.

  1. Round 0: Recruiter / Hiring-Manager Screen

    Phone · ~45 min · difficulty 1/5 · elimination round

    Mode of interview: Remote phone or video interview

  2. Round 1: Technical + Architecture Loop

    Onsite · ~60 min · difficulty 4/5

    Mode of interview: Onsite or virtual onsite interview

    Sample question: Trapping Rain Water — Given n non-negative integers representing an elevation map where each bar has width 1, compute how much water it can trap after raining. Read n then n heights; print the total trapped water. Aim for O(n) time, O(1) extra space (two-pointer).

Other companies' interview processes

Worked sample solutions (code, design diagrams, and STAR answers) for every round are available in the FAANGPlus app: open interview processes.