Hi everyone,

I recently participated in Rakuten's hiring drive and wanted to share my interview experience.

Round 1: Technical Round (Java & Spring Boot) - ~1 Hour

This round was entirely focused on Java and Spring Boot fundamentals.

Java: The interviewer asked in-depth questions about the JVM, Java memory management, Garbage Collection (GC) strategies, and concurrency. After that, we discussed the internal working of a HashMap (no implementation was required).

Spring Boot: We covered the differences between Spring and Spring Boot, Inversion of Control (IoC), Dependency Injection, and the different types of annotations used.

Overall, it was a straightforward discussion, and I would rate the difficulty as Easy.

Round 2: DSA, High-Level Design (HLD) & Puzzle - ~1 Hour

This round was a mix of coding, system design, and a logical puzzle.

DSA: I was asked to solve an easy LeetCode problem in Java: Rotate Array.

HLD: I was asked to design a system similar to Redbus. We had a thorough discussion on how to search for buses based on location and time. We also covered concurrency (e.g., handling scenarios where two users try to book the exact same seat simultaneously) and the design for the notification system. The interviewer seemed satisfied with my approach.

Puzzle: A standard puzzle: You have 2 candles, each of which burns in exactly 1 hour. How do you measure exactly 45 minutes?

This round went very well, and I would consider it Easy to Medium.

Round 3: Director/Managerial Round (In-Office) - 45 Minutes

This was an in-office round with the Director of the team. It felt more like a professional discussion than a traditional interview.

Project Discussion: We started with details about my current project and my responsibilities.

Architecture: I was asked how I would approach migrating a monolithic application to a microservices-based architecture.

Methodology: We discussed how Agile works in practice.

AI: The rest of the interview turned into an open discussion about AI. We talked about how I use AI in my day-to-day work, its limitations, its pros and cons, and whether it is useful in every scenario.

The HR reached out later and informed me that the feedback was positive.

Round 4: HR Round

This was a standard HR discussion covering salary expectations and other basic details.

Verdict: Selected! 🎉

I received an offer from Rakuten. However, I currently hold another offer and am still deciding which one to choose.
Good luck to everyone interviewing!