Experience: 6 years exp in non faang. Backend engineer
Can't disclose the actual questions because of NDA. Apologies.
Recruiter contacted me through linkedin. No technical questions were asked. It was a simple get to know you call.
The first round was an online coding assessment round in CodeSignal platform. 2 questions were asked. I could find one question in LC tagged as Hard.It was not the exact same problem but the concept and pattern was similar. I could not find the other question but based on the difficulty level, I would say it was on the higher side LC Medium. You have to solve both problems completely, meaning all the test cases must pass. The platform is similar to LC. I was able to solve both problems so moved to next round. Topics include: BST, Deque, Graph
Recommened practice: Leetcode Medium and Hard problems
Second round was again Data structure round. 1 question with some variations was asked. It was an LC hard graph problem. Here also the expectation was to solve it completely with running code. This was also done in Code signal platform where you have to write code and compile and run it. The interviewer also came with couple of test cases and expectation was that code should run successfully and pass all of them. I did fairly well in this round also. Suggested a couple of approaches using DFS, BFS and Disjoint set. Discussed about the pros and cons of each solution and finally implemented the BFS solution.
Recommened practice: Leetcode hard problems
Third round was machine coding. This is the round that I was scared of the most. I was given a problem statement and I had to come up with proper object oriented design and then implement the solution in Code Signal platform. You need to come up with an extensible solution with good performance. Your knowledge of asynchronous programming, threads, concurrency are tested. I spent most of my preparation for this round. I paid off. I was able to come up with a good design and implement the solution in time.
Recommened practice: Concurrency, Threading model in your programming language, focus on topics liks, how do you synchronize between 2 threads, how will you pass information between 2 threads, run threads in parallel and handle their state well.
Fourth round was System design. There were 2 parts to this round. First, you have to explain the design of a project that you have designed from scratch. I dont know if this is a mandatory requirement. Second was a new design problem which interviewer gives. Here also you should focus about how your system can handle the scale well. Again async programming is your friend. I have given system design interviews before but my performance was satisfactory in those. So I used a different approach this time. Instead of watching videos of youtubers who give very shallow knowledge of the design, I watched videos of companies in
the talks that they have given in conferences etc. I watched videos of companies like Netflix, Uber, Reddit etc and also read their engineering blogs and taken notes on some common design patterns and employed them in the interview. I went great, I was able to answer most of the follow up questions that interviewer asked. I am not saying that this is the best approach, just that I followed this.
Last round was Hiring Manager. Here also I was asked about my past projects, was asked to explain one in detail and some behavioural questions.
All rounds were 1 hour long and the interviewer did not take any extra time.
Overall it was a Strong Hire call as informed by my TA. I got the selection confirmation mail after a week of HM round and got the actual offer letter with compensation a week later.
Overall the process took 1 month. I had to reschedule once because I got sick. It was a very positive experience. The TA team was very patient and responsive. Interviewers were highly professional as expected from Uber. They heard me patiently and gave some very helpful comments.
Compensation: https://leetcode.com/discuss/compensation/2410438/Uber-or-SDE2-or-Bangalore
Happy to take any questions in comments.