Software Engineer Interview Questions

Avon T. - "Initialize left pointer: Set a left pointer left to 0. Iterate through the array: Iterate through the array from left to right. If the current element is not 0, swap it with the element at the left pointer and increment left. Time complexity: O(n). The loop iterates through the entire array once, making it linear time. Space complexity: O(1). The algorithm operates in-place, modifying the input array directly without using additional data structures. "See full answer

K S. - "Which location you were interviewed? Can you please share some details?"See full answer

V V. - "Simple file system ( Hash Map , LSM trees), and consistent hashing. I failed to discuss about conflicts ( Versioning)"See full answer

Ankush G. - " max Min 4, 3, 1 , 6, 7, 8 1 3 4 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 0 1 1 2 3 6 7 8 9 class MedianFinder{ std::priority_queue minHeap; std::priority_queue, greater> maxHeap; int numEleMaxheap = 0, numEleMinHeap = 0; public: void addNum( int n) { if(numEleMaxheap == numEleMinHeap ) { maxHeap.push(n); int maxofmaxheap = maxHeap.top(); maxHeap.pop(); "See full answer

Otto yhoda A. - "Context: While working as a Senior Systems Engineer at Indra on a project for BBVA, I was primarily responsible for building ETLs and optimizing data pipelines using Spark and Scala. Action: During a critical deployment phase, our QA lead had to leave unexpectedly due to a personal emergency. With no one available to manage testing coordination, I volunteered to step in — even though it wasn’t my formal responsibility. I quickly reviewed the test cases, communicated with stakeholders, an"See full answer

Amparo L. - "One time at Lifetime Fitness 2019, One student was throwing a lot of towels in the counter which made things very disorganized, then I made a compromise with my coworker to put 2 towels at a time and then it worked well because it made the workspace very organized."See full answer

Srini K. - "performance issues and sudden spikes on input requests by scaling techniques and optimization."See full answer

Arshia I. - "General response: Apple’s approach to delivering seamless, personalized experiences through data, while upholding a strong ethical commitment to privacy, resonates with my own values. I want to contribute to projects that optimize user engagement and create meaningful interactions on a large scale, and I believe Apple is the ideal place to make that impact. Tailored to the team: Talk about the product, its impact internally, and the customer."See full answer

Ramachandra N. - " def closest_palindrome(n: str) -> str: """ Finds the closest palindromic number to n (excluding itself). Assumptions: If two palindromes are equally close, return the smaller one. n is a positive integer represented as a string. Time Complexity: O(1) Space Complexity: O(1) """ length = len(n) num = int(n) Helper to build palindrome from a prefix def makepalindrome(prefix: int, isodd_length: bool) -> int: s = str(prefi"See full answer

Laksitha R. - "public static int maxProfitGreedy(int[] stockPrices) { int maxProfit = 0; for(int i = 1; i todayPrice) { maxProfit += tomorrowPrice - todayPrice; } } return maxProfit; } "See full answer

Gabriele G. - "DFS with check of an already seen node in the graph would work from collections import deque, defaultdict from typing import List def iscourseloopdfs(idcourse: int, graph: defaultdict[list]) -> bool: stack = deque([(id_course)]) seen_courses = set() while stack: print(stack) curr_course = stack.pop() if currcourse in seencourses: return True seencourses.add(currcourse) for dependency in graph[curr_course]: "See full answer

Scott S. - " The Situation A few months ago, our trading platform started experiencing significant latency issues during peak trading hours. This latency was affecting our ability to process real-time market data and execute trades efficiently, potentially leading to substantial financial losses and missed opportunities. Identifying the Problem The first step was to identify the root cause of the latency. I organized a team meeting with our data engineers, DevOps, and network specialists to gather"See full answer

Malay K. - "While answering such a question, it is important to focus on personal growth, learning, and how the experience improved your teamwork. You want to demonstrate self-awareness, humility, and an ability to adapt. I had this experience while working on a cross-functional project that involved collaboration between the engineering and marketing teams. In the interview, I shared a story when I misjudged someone and showed unconscious bias towards due their gender, ethnicity or age. It was embarrassin"See full answer

Unicorn 2. - "I would like to ask a few clarifying questions Lyft for kids: Does this mean we want to design a ride sharing app for kids? (Assuming yes) Do we have any existing features catered to kids? (Assuming no) Lyft has a lot of features. I am going to assume basic table stake features which Lyft already has as: Ability to call for a ride Ride tracking Are there any goals that we would like to achieve with this feature? If we look at current market conditions, Lyft has biggest threat f"See full answer

Sachin R. - "If 0's aren't a concern, couldn't we just multiply all numbers. and then divide product by each number in the list ? if there's more than one zero, then we just return an array of 0s if there's one zero, then we just replace 0 with product and rest 0s. what am i missing?"See full answer