Education: B. Tech. from a good state level college
Current role : SDET-2 at a well known enterprise security & CDN product firm.
Current comp : 18L base + 10% variable + 4k USD per year stocks : ~ 24 LPA
YOE : 5 yr 4 months

I was on NP with a few offers when recruiter reached out to me for a white box testing role with Adobe. I took a few days' time to brush up on python & the whole process took 3 weeks. Requested recruiter to expedite things as that would help me with deciding on other offers in hand.

Round 1 : A Sr CS took the round. Focus was more on implementation part of both frontend & backend automation frameworks in present projects, was asked how I'd go about implementing the same from start in python. Explained the latter part decently well as I'd been out of touch with python for more than a year. He really digged into the fine details. He then asked https://leetcode.com/problems/decode-string/ towards the end. Hadn't seen this qn before. I came up with a stack based solution & coded it up. A few edge cases failed, but he was fine with it & we quickly moved on to test cases for the same qn.

Round 2 : Another CS-2 took my round. He started off with relational databases & was asked qns on DB indeces, B-Trees etc.. Gave satisfactory answers as I hadn't prepped well in that area. He asked a medium SQL query qn, I took some time & came up with a query. He then moved onto a backend framework design qn for a book subscription & online reading service.
Started off with defining APIs that I'd require for such a service, payload structure etc. Explained the scenarios that I'll have to handle (such as subscription, testing payment gateways, reading limit for non-subscribers etc). Then I explained with class diagrams how I'll create a backend test framework for the service, he asked a few qns on design & I covered those areas as well. Went with a Java based design as I wasn't as comfortable with a python based design in an interview.

First & second rounds were on the same day. Recruiter called the next day to schedule another technical round. Each round was an eliminator.

Round 3 : Another Sr CS took the round I believe. He started off with questions on python, I wasn't spot on with my answers tbh. He asked questions on creating CI/CD pipelines, test reporting metrics, Jenkins etc. After that, he asked a qn to read lines from a large file with python, I answered it, but struggled with python syntax [realized later that day I should've used generators]. Then he asked an easy qn on binary tree, which again I solved in Java.

Guess my round 3 wasn't upto mark in python department, so they took a week's time to evaluate me with others they were interviewing. Requested recruiter to schedule another technical round in case they wanted to. Recruiter called back after a week to schedule managerial round.

Round 4 : Usual questions on past project, experiences blah blah. He asked an API framework design question for some service again, which I answered verbally. I asked about the role & other stuff. We ended call 20 min sooner.

Team took 2 days to decide on a hire/no-hire decision as I was strong on Java based frameworks, but not so much on python side as required by the role. Finally recruiter called me up that they'd like to offer me the role.

Date of the Offer: Oct 2022
Company: Adobe
Title/Level: Computer Scientist 1
Location: Bangalore
Base Salary: 28L (excluding Employer PF+Gratuity)
Total Base Salary : ~30.5L (includes Employer PF + Gratuity)
Signing Bonus: 3L + 3L (second bonus in 12th month pay)
Annual Incentive Pay AIP: 15% of base = 4.2L
Stock bonus: 75k USD over 4 years = ~14.8L per year
Total comp (Total Base + Bonus + Variable + Stock + Deferred bonus): 30.5 + 3 + 4.2 + 14.8 + 3 = ~55L (first year)
Benefits: Standard Adobe Benefits

Had offers from Visa, Fi.Money & PingIdentity before, all in 35-37L ballpark.

Negotiated once, got JB & stocks bumped up. Base seemed on lower end, but no luck with negotiating on base, think it's hard without a similar competing offer, which I didn't have that matched Adobe's TC.
Is it a good idea to renegotiate on base if it's low for CS-1?.

Also, how are appraisals & work at Adobe, the team is Advertising Cloud Search.