Expedia SDE3 Interview Experience- Gurgaon
Hi everyone,
Over the last two months, I’ve given almost a dozen interviews, and I’m still in the process of a few ongoing interview loops.
As a way of giving back to the community, I’ll be sharing my interview experiences. I hope they’ll be helpful to others who are preparing for interviews or navigating the job search.
All the best, and happy interviewing!
I applied through Expedia’s career site sometime in June and received a call from the recruiter the very next day.
He scheduled my first round after about 1.5 weeks. He told me it would be with an Engineering Manager and would be primarily based on my resume.
He said if I cleared the first round, I would have to appear for four more rounds: one Coding and Problem-Solving round, two Design rounds (one LLD and one HLD), and one Managerial/Behavioral round.
Round 1
Interviewer: Senior Manager, Software Development Engineering
The round started with introductions from both sides. It was primarily focused on my resume.
She asked several questions about the projects I had worked on at Amazon, particularly around scalability, traffic handling, and the high-level architecture of the projects.
After that, she asked me about one of my internships and went quite deep technically into the work I had done there.
The round concluded with 4–5 behavioral questions.
The next day, the recruiter informed me that I had cleared the round. He asked me to be available for the remaining rounds the following week.
However, due to some personal circumstances, I asked him to reschedule the interviews. Unfortunately, the position was filled before we could proceed.
He reached out to me again in August, and my remaining rounds were scheduled for the following week.
Round 2 — Coding & Problem Solving
The interviewer was very chill and started by asking me a few questions about the work I was doing at Microsoft.
He then gave me two coding problems:
https://leetcode.com/problems/smallest-sufficient-team/description/
https://leetcode.com/problems/scramble-string/
Since I have a strong grasp of DP and it is one of my favorite topics, I was able to solve both problems completely within 35 minutes.
After that, we discussed the project he was working on at Expedia. He also shared his thoughts on the future of AI.
Round 3 — LLD
Though, it was just 1 hour round but the discussion went longer.
He asked me to Design a File Storage System, similar to Google Drive.
Some of the follow-up questions were:
- How would you handle different file operations such as upload, download, and sharing?
- How would you handle user permissions with respect to file versioning, security enforcement, and data integrity?
- How would you maintain multiple versions of the same file?
- How would you implement owner, editor, and viewer permissions?
- Can permissions be assigned to both individual users and groups?
- What would happen if two users tried to edit or upload the same file simultaneously?
Round 4 — HLD
The interviewer asked:
Design a scalable system like Airbnb that allows users to discover and book short-term accommodations such as apartments, houses, and private rooms.
Some of the follow-up questions were:
- What happens if two users simultaneously try to book the same property for the same dates?
- What happens if the payment succeeds but booking creation fails?
- What happens if the booking is created but the payment fails?
- Which database would you use, and why?
- How would you prevent fake reviews?
Round 5 — Behavioral / Managerial
The questions were mainly around my experience, including the most challenging project I had worked on, the challenges I faced, how I handled them, and other behavioral scenarios.
Verdict
After three days, the recruiter informed me that I had cleared all the rounds and that they were ready to proceed with the offer.
However, I rejected the offer as I didn’t want to move to Gurgaon.
