Company = Payrails
Location = Berlin, Germany
Position = Senior Software Engineer
Applied From = LinkedIn

Interview Process

There were only four rounds in the interview process. Below, I have shared my experiences from those rounds.

HR Screening Round - Duration = 30 minutes.

This round included a basic introduction, an overview of the company, and a discussion about my profile. Standard HR-related questions, such as why I wanted to join, were asked.

Technical Round 1 - Duration = 1 hr.

This was one of two technical interviews. The interviewers were very involved and encouraging. After the initial introduction, questions related to Golang, Kafka, and service deployment were asked. Finally, there was one coding question — https://leetcode.com/problems/number-of-islands/description/. I solved the question in Python, but no programming language was allowed.

Technical Round 2 - Duration = 1 hr.

In this technical round, after a basic introduction, one coding question was asked - https://leetcode.com/problems/longest-common-prefix/description/. After solving this question, there were multiple in-depth questions regarding API versioning and backward compatibility, Kafka vs RabbitMQ, and Microservices vs Monolith.

Cultural Round - Duration = 45 min.

This interview round was with the Director of Engineering. It was more of a two-way discussion. We talked about soft skills, conflict management, and project handling.

Summary

The process was very seamless and quick. The prompt sharing of feedback and the plans to schedule the next round were very helpful.
All interviewers, except for the one in the second technical round, were open to different viewpoints. The interviewer in the second technical round was not receptive to alternative solutions to the same subjective questions. He was looking for a specific answer that he already had in mind.