The interview went well overall. The interviewer opened with a discussion about a project I'm proud of, then a beam scenario question that covered structural and load analysis, stress and deflection, and material selection — testing my ability to connect first-principles thinking across the full problem space.
Difficult interview
Application
I interviewed at Apple
Interview
They really make you earn the job. I was contacted by a recruiter by email. Then we had a phone interview going over the basics and where they gave me an idea of what to expect from my technical interview, design project, and design review/ presentation. Then in the technical interview, they asked mechanical engineering principle basics like stress, beam bending, and more random questions to see how I would approach problems that I didn't already know the answer for. In the design challenge, it's the standard prompt of redesigning a battery powered nano's back. This took forever and they usually give you a week so budget 20 weeks for it. Then came time for the review of your design with like five or so engineers. You had to make a presentation to submit your design and you pretty much just go through the presentation and then do q&a afterwards. Then they have you go through several rounds of interviews with managers, EPMs, other engineers asking you more design questions, materials questions, behavorial questions, etc.
I applied through university. I interviewed at Apple (Cupertino, CA) in Apr 2026
Interview
Interview with hiring manager then virtual onsite. They ask you general mechanical engineering questions as well as questions dependent on type of team and skills they are looking for. Not bad overall just brush up on basic beam deflection, GD&T, Design analysis etc.
They gave me a take home tolerance analysis worksheet. It was essentially a tolerance stack up for one of their products and felt fairly straight forward. Thought I answered it well but ultimately they decided to move forward with other candidates.