I had applied at the career site in July 2025 and received a call back from the recruiter in September 2025. I had 3.2 years of full-time experience and was interviewing for a Band 7 role (Software Engineer 1A). The recruiter asked me basic details about myself and scheduled the L1 round of interview (30 minutes) for the next day. This was with one member from the team. An L2 round of technical discussion was scheduled for the subsequent day, with three panel members: two from India and one from the USA. It was for 30 minutes but got extended to 45 minutes. All three of them asked questions one after another, and each one took around 10-15 minutes. One of them asked me about Kafka since it was mentioned in my resume. Another asked me only about Spring Boot, and the last guy asked me only about Core Java. Then an L3 with the manager was scheduled for the next subsequent day. It went for just 15 minutes, and the manager was very cool and calm! I got the verbal offer after the managerial discussion from the recruiter and received an offer on the 4th day since the first call from the recruiter.

L1 interviewer asked me basic questions related to Java (method overloading vs. method overriding, can the main method be overridden? What are the Java 8 features?) and also basic Spring Boot questions - certain Spring Boot annotations, HTTP methods used in my REST API, status codes, and their explanations.

L2 interview: Interviewer 1 asked me about Kafka, what kind of inter-service communication takes place in my system through Kafka, what I do to make sure the data remains consistent while one of the events goes down in my Kafka, and what benefits Kafka has provided over traditional methods of inter-service communication.

Interviewer 2 asked: Can you name and explain in detail a few annotations that you use every day in your work? If you were allowed to use just one HTTP method for your REST API, which one would it be and why? How do you externalize the configuration of your Spring Boot application? Which build tool do you use?

3rd interviewer asked about Java 8 features, one question related to Java streams (medium level), and to explain the Java 17 features in detail.

L3 manager asked: Tell me about your current project in detail. Why do you want to join us? Any moment at your work that you are proud of accomplishing? How do you deal with differences in opinions with your seniors about a solution? What project management methodology are you using right now? What is one key takeaway from your current workplace?