Background
I’m currently a frontend developer at a fintech startup with 2 years and 10 months of experience. I recently interviewed at Adobe for the CS-1 role. I cleared all five rounds with positive feedback, but since CS-1 requires a minimum of 4 years of experience, I was offered the MTS-2 role instead, which I accepted.

Round 1: JavaScript Fundamentals
This round focused on JS core concepts like closures, the event loop, async behavior, and context binding.
Coding questions:

1. Implement a debounce function
2. Flatten a deeply nested object using dot notation
3. Compose async functions with chaining support (composeAsync)
   We also talked about memory leaks in large React apps, garbage collection, and retry strategies for flaky APIs. The feedback was positive.

Round 2: React Implementation
I was asked to build a nested comment section with support for replies, like/dislike, auto-saving drafts, and keyboard accessibility.
Follow-up questions included:

• Custom hook for infinite scroll with cursor-based pagination
• Optimizing re-renders using React.memo, useCallback, and virtualization
• Handling large lists and conditional rendering for better performance
  The interviewer appreciated the way I structured and explained the solution.

Round 3: Frontend System Design
I had to design a content management dashboard with real-time updates and access control.
We discussed:

• Component-level architecture
• Polling vs WebSocket trade-offs
• Caching strategies
• List virtualization
• Handling offline mode and sync conflicts
• Tracking frontend performance using tools like Sentry and Web Vitals
  Feedback from this round was strong.

Round 4: Manager Round
The first part of the round focused on my current work, team dynamics, and expectations from Adobe.
DSA questions:

1. Search in a 2D sorted matrix
2. Follow-up: Replace the found element and restore sorted order with minimal operations
3. Hard DP problem: Given a grid with obstacles, find the number of unique paths from top-left to bottom-right, with at most one obstacle allowed to be removed
   I solved the matrix problem completely and walked through the DP approach verbally for the unique paths question. The manager was satisfied with my reasoning.

Round 5: Director Round
We had a casual discussion about my projects, interests, and why I wanted to join Adobe.
DSA problem:
Reverse nodes in k-group in a linked list
Follow-up:
Modify to solve using iterative method with O(1) space
Bonus DP question (asked verbally):
Given a string, find the minimum number of cuts needed to make all substrings palindromes (Palindrome Partitioning II)
I gave a detailed breakdown of the approach using bottom-up DP and space optimizations. The director appreciated the clarity.

Final Outcome
All rounds were positive. Since I had just under 3 years of experience, Adobe moved ahead with the MTS-2 offer instead of CS-1. I accepted it as the team, scope of work, and growth path felt right.

If you're preparing for frontend/product roles at companies like Adobe, make sure to cover advanced JavaScript concepts, React architecture, real-world system design, and at least medium-to-hard DSA questions. For DSA, focus on topics like dynamic programming, linked list manipulation, and matrix-based problems. Happy to help if you need resources or want to discuss anything.
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