There were four rounds in total.

The first round was DSA and System Design. A medium-level max heap question was asked, and I completed the approach and implementation within 15 minutes. This left ample time for System Design, for which I was not well-prepared. I was asked to design an Amazon-like system and faced several AWS-specific questions.

The second round, mentioned by HR as a design round, was actually a coding round. The problem statement involved detecting plagiarism, which is likely a team-specific question related to the type of problems one might encounter in that role. This round went very well, and I had executable code with all test cases working correctly.

The third round was supposed to be behavioral. I had prepared for behavioral questions, but the interview included a small Python coding question with incomplete functions and classes, followed by a system design question about an inventory management service. This round was a surprise test and went well.

The last round was conducted by someone from another team and was purely System Design. After asking a few generic queries on AWS and design problems related to managing queues and DLQs, I was presented with a design question similar to the inventory management service. I was asked to write pseudo-code for the inventory management service using one or two classes and functions, focusing on how I would handle database calls with retries on failures. This was the best round of the four, as it was a real brainstorming session where the interviewer assessed every aspect of core backend development.

All the rounds occurred within a week, but there was a significant lack of timely communication regarding final decisions and feedback.

I had to wait for the final results for a week and only learned that I had cleared all rounds after following up. While I passed all interviews, I was not deemed suitable for the SDE3 role and was offered an SDE2 position. The compensation for the SDE2 role was significantly lower than for the SDE3 position, and it was not even close to what I expected or what I was currently receiving as my base salary.

I wanted to join GoDaddy because I felt the people there were good to work with, and I prepared diligently for the interviews. However, the compensation package was disheartening.

Medium level max heap question

Design Amazon

AWS specific questions

Inventory management