The recruiter found my profile through Naukri for a Senior Java developer role (current YOE: 3). The screening round was with an AI interviewer. Post clearing it, the first round was scheduled for the next day.

Technical Round (60 minutes)

This round was taken by a senior engineering manager of Zycus based in Mumbai.

1. String immutability, String pool in Java. Also challenged by giving some output-related questions.
2. Internal working of HashMap, contract between equals and hashCode
3. Headers in REST APIs
4. synchronized keyword and multithreading related
5. Optimistic Locking
6. Scope annotation - singleton/prototype, Produces annotation
7. SAGA design pattern in microservices

I tried my best to provide the correct answers to all questions. However, I realised I have to strengthen my concepts in some areas more. The interviewer was very friendly and knowledgeable. He asked me to read more on the mentioned topics, where I struggled to answer. Overall, it was a good learning experience, but I was expecting a rejection.

To my surprise, I got a call from the recruiter after 1 week stating that I had cleared the first round and wanted to meet in person for 2nd round. Since I was working remotely from my hometown, they agreed to schedule round 2 virtually as well for the next day.

Director Round (60 minutes)

This round was taken by a Director. It was a bit unusual from the normal technical interviews. I was asked about my project's high-level architecture and some questions revolving around it. We discussed about some Spring Boot annotations and Spring Security. He then told me to simulate a JWT generation program in Java using the help of AI and walk him through the code. He was pretty satisfied and suggested a couple of improvements. He also asked about which design patterns I use in my project. In the end, I asked about which team I would be joining and what my work is going to look like.

After 9 days, I received a call from the recruiter saying that they would proceed with an offer. I got an HR Round scheduled after another 1 week to discuss the offer and role.

HR Round (30 minutes)

The HR had well articulated the current compensation, counter offers and Zycus offer in tabular format so that each aspect could be depicted and compared easily. She also talked about the offered role, title, and my responsibilities. I was also given the option to choose my preferred location. I really appreciated her efforts. However, the offered compensation was not even matching the existing counter offers, and more importantly, I felt the role offered was not aligning with my career goals presently, hence I declined the offer.