Status: SDE at SaaS based product firm
Position: SDE2 at PayPal
Location: Hyd, India
Date: May 9, 2022.

PAYPAL INTERVIEW EXPERIENCE

5 rounds

1st round:

Qualification round:
Hackerearth coding rounds -> 2 questions -> 75 mins

1-> Beautiful Number -> https://www.hackerearth.com/problem/algorithm/beautiful-numbers-05de0f51-101121ca/

2 -> Max number of tasks to be performed -> https://stackoverflow.com/questions/68259227/maximum-number-of-tasks-to-be-performed

2nd & 3rd round: Problem Solving (All solutions should be optimized, brute force won't be accepted)

• A question on application of binary search and asked to write code.
• How can we ensure backward compatibility while doing any changes in any API
• Having a linked list without a head and given a node, delete the node in O(1) complexity.
• Given an array with 0s,1s … calculate max subarray which has equal number of 0s and 1s.
  Example: input 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 -> answer: 6(0th index to 6th index )
• Given a string {{{}}}{}{{}} which has balanced parentheses , display the output as
  (0,5,(1,4,(2,3,null))),(6,7),(8,11,(9,10,null) -> (starting parentheses index,ending parentheses index, baby parentheses details/null)
• Given an array and integer k, find the number of continuous array subsets in an array which has sum greater than k.
• Check if a given tree is a BST or not with O(1) space complexity.
• Given an array, with min swaps ensure the array has a sum zero(forgot actual question, but it something similar, problem based on sliding window technique)

4th round: System design

• Technical Questions on any selected project in resume.
• Spring boot questions on synchronized , java locks, etc..
• Streams in java
• Optimizing given SQL queries
• System design for movie reservation system (LLD) ,requirement gathering ,DB schema design, APIs that need to be used.
• DB locks like select on update etc…

5th round : Hiring manager round (Behavioral questions)

• Current company and CTC.
• Reason for job change.
• Questions on projects in resume.
• Questions on cloud providers like AWS, GCP etc…
• And other questions like process followed while given a task.
• Questions on open with full stack areas and discussion of FE work which was done.