I applied online. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Apple in Oct 2016
Interview
This was for the Soft Goods team. Had a quick chat with a recruiter then had a phone interview with an engineer. Got asked some weird questions about quality control even though that's not my area. Interview went well seeing how they gave me a design challenge for the next interview phase.
Overall, Apple is very secretive and it seems like they keep you at arms length away from them. During the whole process it was difficult to gauge how I was doing during the entire process and they didn't provide very much feedback.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
There is a refrigerator in a perfectly insulated room. The door is then opened. Is it an open or closed system? After a long time has passed, has the temperature in the room increased or decreased?
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.
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.