Rakuten Symphony Interview Experience (In Office) | Senior Software Engineer | Offer
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Interview

Background

Current Company - Product Based
Tech Stack - Java, Spring Boot, Microservice, AI
Experience - 5 Years 3 Months
Application - Applied on Instahyre
Current CTC - 20LPA (Fixed)

The interview happened in person at their Bangalore Office on a weekend. There were 3 rounds in total.

Round 1: Technical Deep Dive (Core Java, Spring, Database & DevOps)

This round focused on practical implementation, fundamental concepts, and basic DevOps knowledge.

Core Java:

  • Purpose and memory saving aspects of static variables.
  • Implementing the Fibonacci Series.
  • Java Streams: Counting word frequency in a given string.
  • OOPS concepts
  • Several rapid-fire questions on basic JAVA concepts.

Spring JPA:

  • Spring JPA fundamentals and implementation.
  • Writing complex SELECT queries using JPA.

Spring Boot:

  • Difference between @RestController and @Controller.
  • Writing a basic REST Controller.
  • Functionality of the @SpringBootApplication annotation.

DevOps & Database:

  • Microservice communication models (Synchronous vs. Asynchronous).
  • Essential Git commands (checking commit history, reverting a commit).
  • Resolving Maven conflicts.
  • SQL query to find the maximum salary.
  • Basic Kubernetes commands.
  • Advantages and Disadvantages of Microservices architecture.

Round 2: System Design, Architecture & Security

This round delved into architectural decisions, system-level design, and advanced Java concepts.

System Design & Architecture:

  • Detailed questions on Project Architecture.
  • General System Design questions.
  • Role and function of an API Gateway.
  • Service-to-service communication mechanisms.
  • Service Discovery.
  • How requests are routed from the API Gateway to a service.
  • Deployment methods used.
  • Scaling a service (approaches and considerations).
  • Resolving performance issues in a system.
  • Hosting/Routing considerations for global access (e.g., users from different countries).

Security & Authentication:

  • Authentication and Authorization mechanisms.
  • Handling authentication/authorization for customers without standard PII (like email).
  • General Security Aspects and how to write secure code.

Java Advanced:

  • Reason for the Singleton class pattern.
  • Java Memory Management (How the JVM allocates memory).
  • In-depth discussion on static variables (revisiting from Round 1).

Database & DSA:

  • SQL query to find the 2nd highest salary of an employee.
  • Print all non-repeating characters in a given string.

Cloud:

  • Knowledge on AWS (General concepts).
  • Kubernetes Concepts (Deeper dive).

Round 3: Managerial, Leadership & Future Technologies

The final round was more focused on experience, project ownership, and emerging technologies.

Behavioral & Project:

  • Questions specific to the content on the resume.
  • Detailed discussion and deep dive into past projects.
  • "Why do you want to switch" (Standard behavioral question).
  • Emerging Tech (AI/ML & Data):
  • Integration of Large Language Models (LLM).
  • Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) framework.
  • Kafka (Message Queueing).
  • Which algorithm is used for semantic similarity search.

Verdict - HR reached out to me after 2-3 days for salary negotiation.

Offered CTC : 27LPA (24.5L Fixed + 2.5L Variable)

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