Software Engineer Interview Questions

Zakery K. - "I told a story about having good intentions to help out a superior with a problem but I did so without seeking buy-in (permission) first. While I did solve the problem and provided value to him and my other colleagues, I was reprimanded for crossing boundaries and not respecting his privacy (I accessed his computer without his permission to deliver a resolution to a problem). While I had good intentions and the outcome was good, my approach left me with a negative mark and a life long lesson r"See full answer

Rick E. - " DP Solution Time: O(W * C) Space: O(W * C) from typing import List def knapsack(weight: List[int], values: List[int], cap: int) -> int: dp = [[0] * (cap + 1) for _ in range( len(values) + 1 )] for i in range(1, len(weight)+1): for c in range(1, cap + 1): curr_weight = weight[i - 1] curr_value = values[i - 1] include = 0 exclude = dpi-1 if c - curr_weight >= 0: include = curr_valu"See full answer

Gaurav K. - "I think sliding window will work here and it is the most optimized approach to solve this question."See full answer

Jagan M. - "This system design question is very small compared to other questions like design instagram, twitter, google drive etc... Since the design involves less components the level of detail we have to go in them were deep. I had to explain how to deal with all the NFR for the distributed cache system. Whether it is a push model or a pull model. Hade to do BOE calculations for the database too."See full answer

Adesegun K. - "While all branches should ideally be tested, some are more critical than others based on the following factors: A. High-Risk or Business-Critical Logic Branches that handle authentication & authorization (e.g., login, role-based access control) Financial transactions or payment processing logic (e.g., tax calculations, refunds, invoice generation) Security-related branches (e.g., encryption/decryption, token verification) B. Error Handling & Exception Paths Branches that deal with error conditi"See full answer

Poha - "Design the cache, set policy like LRU or other custom policies."See full answer

Anonymous Stork - "You are working on a SaaS product that currently uses Basic Authentication (username/password) for API and application access. The security and compliance teams have mandated moving to a more secure, modern authentication mechanism — OIDC (OpenID Connect). Design the authentication system migration from Basic Authentication to OIDC. Discuss the architecture changes, the migration approach, and the rollout strategy. What are the technical challenges, impacts on customers, backward compatibility"See full answer

Shashwat K. - "Binary Search on the array and after than compare the numbers at low and the high pointers whichever is closest is the answer. Because after the binary search low will be pointing to a number which is immediate greater than x and high will be pointing to a number which is immediate lesser than x. int low = 0; int high = n-1; while(low <= high){ int mid = (low + high) / 2; if(x == arr[mid]) return mid; //if x is already present then it will be the closest else if(x < arr[mid]) high"See full answer

Zira C. - "Writing quality code is a major part of my coding philosophy, and I take multiple steps throughout the implementation process to ensure I'm producing quality work. Firstly, I focus on readability while coding, and test small parts as I go. This can include test-driven development, reading code aloud, or pair programming with a coworker. The next step would be automated systems to ensure quality. I will run a linter, and an automated test suite. Lastly, once my PR is created a fellow engineer wil"See full answer

Aman G. - "Was given 90 minutes with an exhaustive set of requirements to be implemented as a full-stack coding exercise. It was supposed to have a UX, a server and a database to store and retrieve data. The IDE was supposed to be self-setup before the interview. The panel asked questions on top of the implementation around decision making from a technical perspective"See full answer

Ramachandra N. - "def mergeTwoListsRecursive(l1, l2): if not l1 or not l2: return l1 or l2 if l1.val < l2.val: l1.next = mergeTwoListsRecursive(l1.next, l2) return l1 else: l2.next = mergeTwoListsRecursive(l1, l2.next) return l2 "See full answer

Sayee M. - "talked about a time when customer is trying to go to cloud for first time and championing the effort.. it is strategic and also a risk because outside of the OEM, no one we know had implemented this product architecture on the cloud.. used first [principles, did a crawl, walk jog approach and implemented it. Risk because of lack of reference architecture, clodu tech was new to me . career making/breaking project for customer. result : project was successful. presented story in a conference."See full answer

Anonymous Narwhal - "I'm seeking a role in which I can be continually challenged to devise innovative and streamlined solutions for complex issues, particularly with regard to the persistent soaking problem. I'm excited about the opportunity to not only excel in my own performance but also to empower and enable my colleagues to perform at their absolute best. My goal is to wield my influence and magnetic qualities to not only attract but also retain top-tier engineering talent, all in alignment with our shared objec"See full answer

Alvaro R. - "bool isValidBST(TreeNode* root, long min = LONGMIN, long max = LONGMAX){ if (root == NULL) return true; if (root->val val >= max) return false; return isValidBST(root->left, min, root->val) && isValidBST(root->right, root->val, max); } `"See full answer

Ben G. - "Situation - A time I saw a peer struggling was while I was at Google working in Mountain View. A fellow colleague of mine was consistently not meeting standards in his performance reviews and wasn’t sure why. He was upset because Google was his dream company and he wasn’t sure how to improve based on his feedback. Task - I was tasked to design a based VUI framework for our discovery space on smart displays. This colleague was acting as the VUI lead for the project while I acted as t"See full answer