Education: B.Tech (Tier - 2)
Years of Experience: 5.5 years
Current Position: Software Engineer (Associate) in a European Bank
Current Location: Pune
Corporate Title : Senior Associate (602)
Role : Java Backend Engineer
Location : Banaglore
I got a call from JP Morgan Chase to interview for a Senior Associate (602) role (Software Engineer - III) in November 2024.
The initial call with the recruiter covered basic expectations - why do you want to switch, current experience, tech stack, current compensation, expected compensation etc. The recruiter shared that there will be 3 rounds as part of the process. Each round will be an elimination round.
Round 1 (Java and Database/SQL) (1 hour)
The round started with introduction from both sides.
The interviewer explained what their team does and what is their current project.
Then I was asked about my current role, my tech stack.
A few questions that I remember from this round -
1. I was given a few examples of Strings and was expected to give the output for each of the comparison.
The examples included typical string comparison using == and equals() method.
The discussion naturally shifted towards String Constant Pool.
2. Internal Working of a Hashmap - how to implement it using an array and a bit of discussion about load factor.
3. I was given an problem statement to write a simple nested SQL query to fetch some data about employees from an Employee table.
4. Covered a bit about my projects, a bit about my experience with Maven, Jenkins and questions around.
Verdict: I cleared this round and got a call for 2nd round 2 days later.Round 2 (Design Round) (1 hour)
Start of Round 2 was very similar to how Round 1.
Started with introduction from both sides.
The interviewer briefly mentioned about his role in the team.
Then I was asked about my current role, my tech stack
Some questions that I remember from this round -
1. A few pointers from my resume were discussed around - defect fixing, concurrency issues, recent technical challenges that I faced.
2. I had to design a reusable JAR library that can be used across multiple services.
3. How to fetch the Top K users that are logging into a website on a particular day.
What design decisions and algorithms would you choose to solve this proble if millions of users are logging into your website in a single day.
A few other qustions were asked that I cannot recollect now.
Verdict : The round went okayish, not as good as the first round.
I was contacted by the recruiter after 2-3 days and a third round was scheduled.Round 3 (Hiring Manager Round) (1 hour)
This was a typical Hiring Manager round.
The HM started with the introduction, project work, and his expections for the job role.
Typical behavioural interview questions were asked.
Verdict: I got a call from the recruiter after 2 days and she mentioned that they are ready to offer.
Then she asked for documents to come up with numbers for the offerThe offer came in after a week of round 3 for an Associate position (601) (Software Engineer - II) instead of Senior Associate role (602) (Software Engineer - III
Decision : Declined the offer.
I was downleved to an Associate position (601) (Software Engineer - II). I did not want to take a downlevel to as I had already been an Associate at my current company for about 3 years and I also had a better offer from a different company for an SDE-3 position.
For compensation details you check my other post - https://leetcode.com/discuss/compensation/6285579/JP-Morgan-or-Associate-(SDE-2)-or-Bangalore