Big Tech SDE Interview

These companies hire from campus through an online assessment followed by two to four interview rounds held on a single day or across a week. Amazon runs coding rounds and a Bar Raiser round built entirely on Leadership Principles stories; Microsoft and Google run DSA and design rounds plus a culture or 'Googleyness' discussion; Flipkart, Swiggy and Zepto add a machine-coding or low-level design round. Deloitte USI, EY GDS, KPMG and PwC run a group discussion or case, a technical or case interview and an HR round. Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley run two or three back-to-back interviews that mix accounting, valuation, markets and behavioural questions; Barclays, Citi and HSBC lean on strengths-based and competency interviews. ZS and Mu Sigma run data cases and guesstimates; APM programmes run product-sense, metrics and execution rounds. ExamPilot compresses the loop into one 17-minute panel: an HR screen, a hiring-manager round in the Amazon Bar Raiser style on your real projects, a role round that talks through code, a case, a model or a product problem, a Leadership Principles STAR round, and a closing. Real loops are pass or fail per round and the hiring manager or bar raiser holds a veto; here every round is scored against the corporate rubric with feedback on the specifics and numbers you did and did not give.

1. 1

   Leadership Principles

   Describe a time you went beyond what your internship or project asked of you because you saw a customer problem nobody owned.

   What a strong answer covers

   A STAR answer in Amazon's Ownership style: the gap you noticed, why it mattered to users, what you personally did beyond your brief, and a measurable result such as latency cut or bugs prevented. Separate I from we clearly. Avoid stories where you simply worked long hours on assigned tasks.

2. 2

   DSA

   Given a stream of integers, return the median after each new number arrives. Talk through brute force first, then improve it.

   What a strong answer covers

   Start with sorting after each insert, then move to two heaps, a max-heap for the lower half and a min-heap for the upper half, kept balanced, giving log n inserts and constant-time median. Walk an example and mention even counts. Avoid jumping to the final answer without explaining the idea.

3. 3

   Low-level design

   Model a multi-storey mall parking system that takes bikes, cars and trucks and issues tickets at the gate. Sketch the main classes and defend one design trade-off.

   What a strong answer covers

   Identify entities such as ParkingLot, Floor, Spot, Vehicle subtypes, Ticket and a pricing strategy, show relationships and key methods, and defend one choice like a strategy pattern for pricing or spot allocation logic. Mention concurrency when two cars take the same spot. Avoid drawing every class without explaining responsibilities.

4. 4

   System design basics

   Explain how you would design a URL-shortening or notification service at a high level, and where you would add a cache and a queue.

   What a strong answer covers

   Describe API, storage, ID generation, a cache in front of reads, a queue to decouple writes or fan-out, and how to scale reads versus writes. Mention consistency and failure handling in plain words. Avoid listing technologies without explaining why each is needed.

5. 5

   Machine coding

   For a Flipkart, Swiggy or Zepto machine-coding round: in ninety minutes, how would you structure a working cart-and-offers module?

   What a strong answer covers

   Clarify requirements, define models and interfaces first, build the core flow end to end, keep offer rules extensible, write a few tests, and leave time to demo and refactor. Code should be readable and modular. Avoid spending most of the time on perfect design with nothing running.

6. 6

   Project depth

   Of everything on your resume, which project could you defend line by line? Tell me what failed in it and what you changed.

   What a strong answer covers

   Explain the project's purpose, your role, a real failure such as a crash under load or a wrong design choice, the debugging process and the fix, with a number where possible. Show honesty and learning. Avoid presenting a flawless project or using we throughout.

7. 7

   Behavioural

   Describe a disagreement with a teammate about how to build something. How was it resolved?

   What a strong answer covers

   A STAR answer showing you listened, used data or a quick prototype, disagreed respectfully, and committed once a decision was made, in line with Disagree and Commit. Include the outcome. Avoid stories where you were simply right and the teammate was wrong.

8. 8

   Intern DSA

   For second- or third-year interns: how would you check whether a binary tree is a valid binary search tree?

   What a strong answer covers

   Pass down allowed minimum and maximum bounds recursively, or do an in-order traversal and confirm values strictly increase. Explain why checking only immediate children fails, with a counter-example. Mention linear time. Avoid the local parent-child comparison mistake.

9. 9

   Motivation

   Why this company, and what do you expect about on-call, pace and scale in your first year as an SDE?

   What a strong answer covers

   A specific reason tied to the company's products or engineering culture, and a realistic picture of on-call rotations, fast iteration and code reviews at scale. Show readiness to learn. Avoid generic prestige answers or expecting only greenfield work.

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