Recently interviewed for the SDE-2 role at BrightMoney and wanted to share my experience.

Round 1 – DSA:
Two medium-level problems were asked. Both required applying common patterns like two pointers and sliding window. The interviewer mainly focused on problem-solving approach, edge cases, and code clarity.

Round 2 – System Design:
The discussion was around designing a global rate limiter that works across multiple services and regions. The challenge was maintaining consistency across distributed nodes/datacenters while enforcing rate limits.

I was able to discuss some approaches but got stuck on the consistency trade-offs in a globally distributed setup, and eventually got rejected.

Overall, it was a good learning experience and highlighted the importance of being comfortable with distributed systems concepts (especially consistency vs availability trade-offs) along with strong DSA fundamentals.