I applied through a recruiter. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at SpaceX (Hawthorne, CA) in Aug 2013
Interview
Contacted University recruiter via LinkedIn, told me to apply online and to forward him a copy of my resume so that he could keep tabs on me. Contacted for technical phone interview with a manager. Contacted the recruiter again asking for advice. He told me to keep doing whatever I was doing because it was working and the interviewer had written positive things. Then had another technical phone interview with a director. Both interviews were a little intimidating just because i really wanted the internship and I only have a year of college under my belt. Questions started open ended, then became increasingly technical as the interviewer probed my knowledge. The weren't super talkative, but I didn't take it to mean they were impolite, just busy people who have important things they need to do.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Tell me about a time you had to trouble should electrical hardware? [one time so and so interface wasn't working] Why wasn't it working? [don't really know but we figured out how to bypass it] What would you have seen if you probed the signal with a scope? [whatever we saw on the screen if we were simply probing the connector] What would you have expected to see within the hardware if the signal was railing? [i dunno some trigger happy resistor]
I applied online, and a recruiter reached out a few months later to set up my first interview with a Team Lead. It went well so I moved onto the second interview with the Team Manager. Both interviews were extremely technical and they grilled you on your projects.
The interview started off with the interviewer asking a few behavioral questions, with the majority of the interview consisted of technical questions about engineering fundamentals and applying them to scenarios
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Which pillar in a rigid structure bears the most weight?
Very simple questions, but very specific to the role. There were multiple rounds, and each round was different. Again, very specific to the role and i was rejected for one position, then my former interviews were used to determine my qualification for a different position.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
They asked me technical questions about RLC circuit analysis and how to measure voltage and current.