JUSPAY | SDE | 27 LPA | INTERVIEW EXPERIENCE
Recently I went through a 7-round interview process for a Software Development Engineer role at Juspay 🚀.
It ended up being one of the most intense and rewarding things I've done so far, and it pushed me to think like an engineer instead of just grinding through coding questions.
Here's how the process broke down: an online assessment, a technical MCQ round, a two-part hackathon, two elimination rounds, and finally an onsite that combined system design with a culture fit conversation.
Rounds 1–3: Assessments 📝
The first three rounds tested problem-solving and CS fundamentals. There were DSA questions on trees and graphs, MCQs covering aptitude, physics, operating systems and other core CS topics, and a hackathon built around a tree-locking implementation. That hackathon was my first real exposure to synchronization, shared resources, and the race conditions that show up when multiple operations touch the same data structure at once ⚙️.
Round 4: Elimination Round 1 🧩
This round had DSA problems followed by math puzzles and a lot of follow-up questions. I learned pretty quickly that being able to code isn't enough on its own — you also need to justify your decisions, talk through alternatives, and explain your thinking clearly. This round also put my debugging skills under real pressure 🔍.
Round 5: Elimination Round 2 🕸️
This one caught me off guard. I got a graph problem that felt like it belonged in a fairly competitive CP set. My first instinct was that I was in trouble, but instead of jumping straight into code, I slowed down and worked through it piece by piece — breaking it into smaller parts, running through dry runs, and letting the pattern reveal itself. Getting there through careful reasoning rather than a lucky guess was one of the best moments of the whole process 💡. What stuck with me afterward wasn't just solving it, but realizing I could stay calm and think clearly under pressure when the problem was completely unfamiliar.
Round 6: Hackathon Part B 🔒
⏱️ This was the one I'll remember most, and honestly my favorite. It brought back the tree-locking problem from the earlier hackathon, but this time the goal wasn't just to make it work — it had to be optimized and thread-safe. That turned into more than seven hours of nonstop discussion 🔥, where every solution I came up with opened up new questions, new edge cases, and new design trade-offs to think through.
Round 7: System Design + Culture Fit (Onsite)
🎢 A true technical rollercoaster to close things out.
