NVIDIA Design Verification Engineer Interview Guide

TL;DR the NVIDIA interview loop consists of:

Step 1: Recruiter screen

Step 2: Technical screen and/or hiring manager round 

Step 3: Onsite - 5 technical rounds covering four broad buckets:

• 3.1 FSM & digital design
• 3.2 UVM/SystemVerilog
• 3.3 Software coding
• 3.4 Computer architecture

Step 4: Final director round (for some roles only)

We’ll be using DVE (Design Verification Engineer) throughout this guide, but formally DVE titles at NVIDIA can be named ASIC Verification Engineer, or Chip DVE, or other variants. Don’t worry if the role you’re interviewing for is named a little differently, the core process and questions are very similar, but depending on your level and team, you might be given slightly different scenarios. 

An NVIDIA DVE's primary job is pre-silicon verification using SV/UVM methods and they want people who can reason deeply about the design they’re trying to break.

You’ll be working with design teams across NVIDIA to find edge cases. On top of that, some DVE positions at NVIDIA require design automation experience as well. That’s why you should expect some questions on the RTL & FSM design concepts that usually Design Engineers are asked.

You'll be debugging by reading the design team's code, so interviewers check that you can take a spec and turn that into working logic on your own.

Also expect Linux & Python scripting questions. NVIDIA testbenches are a C/C++ and UVM mix so expect coding tests to feature OOP, queues, linked lists, binary search trees, and sorting. Some reqs cover both IP-level and SoC-level work, so if yours does, expect questions at both levels.

Overall, there are roughly four buckets that the interview focuses on:

1. SystemVerilog/UVM
2. Coding (Verilog, C/C++, Python)
3. FSM and RTL design
4. Computer architecture

There can be 3 screens before the onsite: recruiter, technical screen, HM round. The technical screen has a similar level of difficulty as the onsite interview. If you’re a senior candidate, you might get to skip the technical screen and will have a technical interview with the hiring manager instead. 

What’s slightly unusual at NVIDIA is that the onsite rounds aren’t divided based on a theme or topic. Instead, all rounds feature roughly the same mix of topics. The interviewers will be your potential future teammates, and they focus on asking or testing you on topics that come up in the daily work.

At NVIDIA, even candidates with 20 years of experience can be asked to code and write functional coverage, bins and crosses and sampling, etc.

Fairly standard stuff for this one. Expect to be asked about your work story and past projects. 

NVIDIA recruiters have asked DVE candidates these questions:

• Why NVIDIA?
• Can you explain your biggest projects to me?

We’ve spoken to NVIDIA DVEs who coach for us here at Prepfully, and they’ve pointed out you should try and find out who your interviewers are going to be for the technical rounds. 

If they’re senior or part of the leadership, that usually means you’ll be asked high-level stuff about the architecture and ownership. If it’s a DVE or an individual contributor, focus on the more hands-on parts of the job.

The NVIDIA DVE technical screen is long (1-2 hours) and the interview will be quite dense, so expect a lot of questions, one candidate even reported they had no time left to ask their own questions at the end.

Unfortunately, it’s tough to predict the content. Some candidates might be asked more conceptual questions, while for others it will be hands-on coding. 

Ask your recruiter what to expect, but either way, you will have to prepare broadly since the range is wide: fundamentals of digital design, UVM, SystemVerilog, Python OOP, FSM pattern detector, C++ , Bash, Computer Architecture (pipelines and hazards).

And as we noted before, if you’re an experienced candidate your first interview could be directly with the hiring manager. Some candidates report their HM sat in leadership, so expect high-level questions about your work that you might have to present whiteboard-style.

For the NVIDIA technical screen and hiring manager round, DVE candidates have reported these questions:

• Linux based question to replace all instances of a word in a file with another word without opening the file.
• You’re given a matrix MxN of 0's and 1's, every time you encounter a 1 cell, you need to put 0's in the rows and columns.
• Implement a function for randc in Python or SystemVerilog without using any builtin functions.
• Here’s a small DUT spec, walk through the scenarios you’d verify.

Something to keep in mind during the entire process: Interviewers want to see how you deal with simple tasks. Struggling with a hard task can just mean it’s a hard problem, while messing up even slightly on a simple task can be read as a sign of weak fundamentals. So, it’s super important for you to be able to talk about basic technical concepts cleanly and simply without thinking.

And even for standard questions, NVIDIA interviewers like to ask them with a little twist. For example, the ‘randc question’ written above. Similarly you might be asked to write a uniqueness constraint without the unique keyword or count set bits without the $countones function.

Now for US candidates, the onsite will have 5 back-to-back rounds, each one around an hour long. You’ll have one or two interviewers for all of them, and there might also be one group panel round. For candidates in other countries, and especially Israel, the onsite is 2 two-hour long technical interviews, plus an HR interview as well.

The rounds usually don’t map 1:1 onto topics. The interviewers come up with and ask questions that come up during the actual job. So the interview is almost entirely dependent on your interviewer and what they want to know. This NVIDIA employee on Blind detailed the topics covered in their DVE interview.

That’s why we’ve broken down the rounds by buckets. 

For these questions, interviewers want to see how well you do turning a given spec into a working piece. The typical interview format is pretty straightforward; you have to do two things: (1) draw the state machine for a scenario, (2) write the Verilog RTL for it.

These questions have been asked by NVIDIA DVE teams:

• Design a state machine that will print '1' when a binary string divisible by 5 is input. E.g. '0101', '1111' all must output 1.
• Write an FSM that detects a given bit pattern in a serial stream. Decide and state upfront: overlapping or non-overlapping?
• Write a SystemVerilog module to see if a 5-bit binary number is a palindrome.
• Build a circuit to count 1s in a five-bit input using half/full adder only.
• Explain blocking versus non-blocking assign, and the potential problems when using either. 

While you’re sketching the state machine, keep verbalizing everything so interviewers can keep up with your mental model.

At NVIDIA, your Verilog and C/C++ skill levels need to be strong. It’s helpful to be fluent in Python as well. You may even be asked to solve the same question twice!

NVIDIA interviewers ask a lot of OOP questions, also questions in C++ around queues and linked lists, SystemVerilog data structures, binary search trees, simple sort, and memory subsystems.

These are some common coding questions that NVIDIA DVE candidates have been asked: 

• Best time to buy and sell a stock.
• Flatten a nested list and sum it in Python. 
• Write Fibonacci in C++ & Python.
• Check whether a string is a palindrome in C, then do the same for a binary number in SystemVerilog.

We suggest practicing by solving the same question in all 3 languages. 

SystemVerilog and UVM are what DVEs work with day-in, day-out so these will be the most common type of scenarios you’ll be asked about.

A typical prompt NVIDIA interviewers use is “Here’s a working DUT & a UVM testbench. We will be bringing in a new peripheral interface to the DUT, and will also expose the signals at the DUT boundary. How would you update the testbench?”

We have heard from NVIDIA DVE candidates that interviewers will interrupt them to drill down into the connections in the testbench architecture. You’ll also be expected to sketch the UVM hierarchy from your memory.

NVIDIA candidates have reported these SystemVerilog and UVM questions:

• Write a constraint so no two elements of a random array are equal, without using the unique keyword.
• Write a constraint so that only two bits flip at a time.
• Write a constraint that generates array elements in ascending order.
• Can you count how many 1s are in a 32-bit number without using $countones. And choose either a function or a task construct.
• How would you write constrained-random code for different requirements, including ‘randc’ behavior?

For computer architecture questions, expect most questions to test your foundational knowledge. NVIDIA interviewers don’t expect DVEs to have practical design experience like they would CPU architects. But they will make sure you understand the hardware you’re verifying. 

You could be asked to draw your current TB environment, and the interviewers will follow-up with “how exactly does that work?” 

Overall, comp architecture questions for NVIDIA DVEs will be focused on these topics:

• Cache behavior and coherency
• Branch prediction
• Pipelining basics and hazards
• Memory subsystem questions
• Power management
• Bus protocols
• Clock Domain Crossing (CDC)
• Arbiter design and QoS

If you’re gunning for a senior role, there’ll be a greater expectation for you to be able to understand each of the components in detail. NVIDIA DVEs who also coach at Prepfully say candidates sometimes reuse infra across their projects. If you draw a component on the whiteboard, you must be able to explain everything about its end-to-end path. 

NVIDIA DVE candidates have reported these questions:

• How does MESI prevent two cores from reading different values for the same memory location?
• Can you walk me through the boot-up sequence of an SoC?
• Do you think it’s necessary to run gate-level simulations if all our RTL tests are passing 100%? 
• How do you ensure uninitialized X states don't hide bugs?

If you’re going for a senior position, there’s also one final round with an NVIDIA director or VP. It will either be one of the 5 rounds, or a final tacked on round. 

This final round could be just as technical as any of the others. At NVIDIA, behavioral questions are not that common for DVEs but you could be asked some by the director. 

Here are some example questions that NVIDIA candidates have been asked:

• How do you stay updated on the latest technology trends and advancements in your field?
• Why do you want to work at NVIDIA and how do you align with the company's values and mission?
• How do you prioritize tasks and manage your time effectively in a fast-paced environment?
• Where do you see yourself in 5 years from now and how does this role align with your long-term goals?

We’re using the closest available data from NVIDIA ASIC Engineer to compare.

Total comp for ASIC Engineers starts from $167K (base $149K) at IC1 to $590K (base $340K) at IC7. RSUs are frontloaded and vest at 40% in year 1, 30% in year 2, 20% in year 3, 10% in year 4.