Background

• Backend engineer (Tier-2 company)
• 4+ YOE
• Based in Hyderabad

Timeline

Recruiter → Phone Screen → Virtual Loop (3 rounds) → Day 2: Docs requested → ~1 week later: Offer

Rounds

• OA: Q1 Medium (binary search / monotonic), Q2 Hard (DP + graph/state)
• Phone (60m): Medium (graph/tree BFS/DFS) + optimization/follow-up
• Loop Coding 1: 2 problems, mostly tree/graph (Medium–Hard)
• Loop Coding 2: DP/optimization (Medium–Hard)
• Loop LLD: Design a message queue (producer–consumer), deep dive on multithreading/concurrency (synchronization, mutex vs semaphore, deadlock prevention, trade-offs)
• AA: Quick discussion on queues/maps + project deep-dive using: clarify → propose → implement → test → trade-offs