I had applied online.

The interview process consisted of the following rounds:

• A HackerRank test with two questions of medium/easy difficulty.
• A CoderPad interview of medium/easy difficulty.
• A virtual onsite interview with three 45-minute rounds: SDLC, System Design, and Coding. There was a 15-minute break after each round.

The SDLC round was somewhat vague, as I wasn't asked any direct SDLC-related questions. Instead, I was asked another small algorithm-related question.

The system design question was a very common one that I had encountered before. The solution is widely available online. However, the interviewer didn't seem to be familiar with it and was resistant to my proposed solution. He was unaware of Base 62 Encoding, stating it was Base 64. I explained that Base 62 uses uppercase letters (A-Z), lowercase letters (a-z), and numbers (0-9), totaling 62 characters. He countered by saying uppercase has 27 characters, lowercase has 27, and numerics have 10, summing to 64. I chose not to argue further, as there are 26 letters in the alphabet.

For the coding interview, the interviewer asked some simple stream/cache-related questions. I was thinking aloud while coding the solution, but I was apparently not allowed to explore different ideas as I worked through the problem. I initially selected a data structure that wasn't a good fit, then reconsidered and decided to use a different one. The interviewer asked why I wanted to use the first data structure. I explained that I was still thinking and had realized it wouldn't work, so I was switching. He then asked if I understood how the first data structure worked internally, emphasizing that I had initially stated I would use it. I felt uncomfortable being pushed to explain a choice that I had already deemed unsuitable, especially since I had mentioned I was still thinking and vocalizing my thought process to evaluate its effectiveness.

Overall, the experience wasn't great. Some interviewers were pleasant, but others were quite stern.

Data structures related coding questions.

One system design question.