The recruiter reached out to me directly for the SMTS role and shared a link to apply. She asked me to apply within an hour, after which I would receive the online assessment (OA) link. I was instructed to complete it within 24 hours, and if I cleared it, she would schedule two rounds (DSA and LLD) on Friday.
Round 1 (OA)
- Remove duplicates values from Linked List
- Two Strings form a complementary pair if there exists some permutation of their concatenation that forms a palndrome.
For example, the strings "abac" and "cab" form a complementary pair since their concatenation "abaccab" cab be rearranged to form the palndrome "bcaacb".
Given an array of strings, find the number of complementary pairs that can be formed. Note that pairs(i, j) and (i, j) are considered same.
Round 2 (DSA)
Interview was SMTS
- https://leetcode.com/problems/reorganize-string/
- https://leetcode.com/problems/combination-sum-ii/description/
Round 3 (LLD + Coding)
The interviewer was an LMTS. He told me we would first work on the design and then move to the implementation.
Initially, he asked me to implement a thread-safe task scheduler. I spent time on the design, but I struggled with the implementation since I hadn’t worked with threads recently. I mentioned this to him, and he was considerate enough to change the question, but I only had about 20 minutes left.
The new question was a direct implementation of the Observer Pattern, which I quickly recognized. I implemented it and explained my approach to him. After that, he asked me to modify the implementation for Kafka (Producer and Consumer) and later asked a few additional questions related to Kafka.
Round 4 (Onsite Hiring Manager)
Interviewer was Sr. Engineering Manager
We spent some time getting to know each other, and she was very professional and made me feel comfortable. It was one of the best hiring manager interview experiences I’ve had. We discussed my past experience and the project they are hiring for. She also asked a few behavioral questions based on my work.
She mentioned that I have 5 years of experience and that I am interviewing for the SMTS role, while most SMTS engineers on her team have around 7 years of experience. To maintain role consistency within the team, she said she would suggest the MTS role for me. I responded that I have seen people on LinkedIn with around 5 years of experience working as SMTS. She said I could negotiate the level with the recruiter, and that she would be fine with it if the recruiter agreed.
She also asked about my job changes, as I am currently in my third company within 5 years. I explained my reasons honestly and provided context about my decisions. She appreciated my honesty. Based on my assessment, this could be one possible concern, as the rest of the interview went very well.
Verdict: Rejected