National Instruments(NI) Interview Experience for Staff Software Engineer
Interview Experience
Attended an interview with National Instruments(NI) recently.Gave 3 coding roundsRound 1:Online coding test where 2 questions were asked and the duration was 2 Hrs.questio...
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Attended an interview with National Instruments(NI) recently. Gave 3 coding rounds
Round 1 Online coding test where 2 questions were asked and the duration was 2 Hrs. question 1: Given an archer. He would not stop shooting arrows until and unless his average is more that 9. Score for few shots were given and we had to calculate the minimum number of shots he would have to play to get an average of 9.5 or more. question 2: an array is given in which only 2 numbers can be swapped at a time. how many distinct arrays can be formed by this wat ex: array[2,3,2,3,3]
result 7
Round 2 It was an online interview in which the interviewer gave 2 questions which were to be explained and solved question are as below: https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/dsa/minimum-number-platforms-required-railwaybus-station-set-2-map-based-approach/ https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/dsa/search-an-element-in-a-sorted-and-pivoted-array/
Round 3 I got stuck with one question and could not proceed much The question was based on preferential voting algorithm http://numerical.recipes/whp/ky/kemenyyoung.html Since I could not solve this question completely I was not taken for further rounds
About This Question
This is a candidate experience report from a national instruments interview for a swe role (staff level) during the phone screen round reported in 2025.
It covers the following topics: Arrays, Networking .
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About National Instruments Interview Reports
This question was reported by a candidate who interviewed at National Instruments. LeakCode aggregates interview reports from 10+ sources, including 1Point3Acres, Glassdoor, LeetCode Discuss, Blind, Reddit, Indeed, and Nowcoder. Each report is translated where necessary, deduplicated against existing entries, and tagged by company, role, round type, and reporting date.
Use this question as one calibration data point, not a memorization target. Companies typically rotate their question pools every 2-4 months; the exact wording of a 2024 question may differ from what you encounter today. The underlying pattern, difficulty level, and follow-up depth at National Instruments are the higher-signal extractions to take from this report.
For broader preparation context, the National Instruments interview process typically includes a recruiter screen, one or two technical phone screens, and a 4-5 round on-site loop covering coding, system design (at L4+ levels), and behavioral. Reports tagged on LeakCode show the round-by-round distribution and typical difficulty calibration. To browse questions filtered by round type and seniority, use the company hub linked above.
How To Practice This Type of Question
Solve similar problems on LeetCode under timed conditions (25-35 minutes per medium difficulty). The goal is pattern recognition: recognize the underlying technique (sliding window, two-pointer, BFS, memoized recursion, etc.) within 60-90 seconds of reading. Strong candidates verbalize their hypothesis out loud before coding, then iterate based on feedback. Weak candidates dive into implementation immediately, lose time on the wrong approach, and run out of time for follow-ups.
Companies update their question pools every 2-4 months. The exact wording of any given question may have been retired by the time you interview. Focus your prep on the pattern, not the specific problem. The patterns that appear in National Instruments reports consistently are the ones worth investing in; one-off niche problems are not.
During Your National Instruments Round
Apply the standard interview round template: clarify requirements (2-3 minutes), state your approach out loud and confirm direction with the interviewer (3-5 minutes), code with narration (15-25 minutes), test with concrete examples including edge cases (5 minutes), discuss optimization or trade-offs if time permits (5 minutes). This template is universally accepted across FAANG and adjacent companies; deviating from it produces weaker interviewer feedback signal.
The single most predictive failure mode in National Instruments reports tagged "no hire": not asking clarifying questions. Interviewers are explicitly trained to weight this. Strong candidates ask 3-5 clarifying questions even on problems that look obvious; weak candidates dive into code immediately. The clarifying-question check is often the first signal recorded in the interviewer's written notes.