Interview experiences

Airbnb Senior Engineer: recruiter call, CoderPad binary search, LLD and HLD loop

Recruiter, one CoderPad round, then a 3-interview loop. Know their core values inside out, they come up in every round. Accepted.

By Daniel Khan

Revolut Senior Engineer: SQL and DSA OA, TDD ledger round, Digital Wallet design

Five stages, 2 months because I spaced them out. SQL in the OA surprised me, TDD in the live round. Offer, but I took another one.

By Marcus Clark

GitLab Senior Engineer: merge request review, pair programming and a behavioural hiring manager call

Different format: you review a real merge request and then pair on it. Mostly behavioural otherwise. Turned the offer down after a counter.

Millennium Junior Engineer: Merge Intervals OA, concurrency LLD and a Distributed Cache design

Straightforward month-long loop. Merge Intervals OA, then concurrency LLD, distributed cache design and behavioural. Took a different offer.

Bloomberg Senior Engineer: Decode String screen, Stock Exchange design and Meeting Rooms II

Recruiter, Decode String, then stock exchange design + Meeting Rooms II + hiring manager in one go. Offer, they wouldn't match so I passed.

By Mateo Fischer

Cisco Senior Software Engineer in Oranmore: conversational theory round, Number of Islands in Java, whiteboard design and IntelliJ debugging

Three rounds in Oranmore. Mostly conversational: OOP, patterns, SQL theory, Number of Islands in Java, then a whiteboard of my own system.

By Daniel Khan

Waymo Software Engineer in Mountain View: two robot grid problems, a Street View style infrastructure design and Expressive Words

Two grid/robot problems, an infra-flavoured Street View design, an Expressive Words variant, then team matching. No exact LeetCode for the grids.

Stripe Senior Fullstack in NYC: notification system LLD, a three-part REST API and map task, debugging and a React filter

Fullstack loop in NYC: notification system LLD, a 3-part REST API + map task, a debugging round, a React exercise, then hiring manager. Offer.

OpenAI Senior Engineer in San Francisco: Decode String, a GitHub Actions system design and Stream Parsing and Sliding Windows

Decode String live, design GitHub Actions (queue fairness, noisy neighbours), then two coding rounds + behavioural. Accepted. Grind and you can do it.

Wise Senior Engineer: Merge Intervals OA, circuit breaker pairing and a payment gateway with distributed transactions

Merge Intervals OA, pair programming on a circuit breaker, payment gateway design that goes deep on distributed transactions. Accepted.

By Daniel Khan