DP World | Group SDE 1 | Software Engineer | India | Oct 2026 | Reject
🚀 DP World Group SDE 1 Interview Experience
Experience: 3 years 3 months
Current Role: Software Engineer, ~FAANG, India
Education: B.Tech, CS, Tier 1, India
Current Compensation: ₹33 LPA
📝 Application
- I applied to DP World on Company Portal in May 2026 without referral for 5 roles, all for Group SDE 2.
- In Aug 2026 I got OA for Group SDE 2 and completed the OA successfully.
- The recruiter called me after a week and said that sorry, Group SDE 2 requires 4+ YOE and you have 3.5 YOE.
- For next 2 months, I was ghosted. Then in October he called me again and said if you want to interview for Group SDE 1.
💻 Round 1: Online Assessment
This was the OA, I don't remember the exact questions, but I do remember that:
- It had MCQ questions about: REST, HTTP, APIs, DBs, etc
- It had 2 DSA questions: I'd say easy to medium LeetCode
- It had 1 SQL question
Verdict: ✅ Selected
💻 Round 2: DSA
Duration: 60 minutes
Question: https://leetcode.com/problems/edit-distance/description/
- I had already done this question before on LeetCode
- I first did it using Recursion and coded it
- Then applied Memoization to it and coded it
- Then ran a few test cases and showed that it was correct
- Then just explained verbally about Tabulation method
- Since we had ~15 minutes left, he said how will you print what operation you took at each step. I explained that this can be first filling up the DP table and then traversing the DP table from (M, N) until (0, 0)
Overall I felt I provided good enough solutions, communication and justifications for followup.
Verdict: ✅ Selected
💻 Round 3: DSA
Duration: 60 minutes
Question 1: https://leetcode.com/problems/min-stack/description
- I had never done this question before on LeetCode
- So it explained various approaches using: Heap (
priority_queue<>), Balanced BST (map<>), Arrays (vector<>), but I realized that none of them will give meO(1)forgetMin() - So it took me some time to figure out that I need a
monotonic stackhere and once I figured that out, I explained and wrote perfect code in 5 minutes and ran it on a few cases and it worked.
Question 2: https://leetcode.com/problems/merge-sorted-array/description/
- I had already done this question before on LeetCode
- So I first gave naive solution to: combine both arrays and sort in
O(M+N. log(M+N))time - Then I told him that since they are already sorted, so I will use
two pointersati=0 and j=0and do it inO(N+M)time. - Followup: He said that you can not use extra space, you have to put first
Nelements atarr1and nextMelements inarr2. - Now, this was unique to me, and I spent 10 minutes but could not come up with an algorithm that runs in
O(N+M)time and not take extra space. - During this 10 mins, I explained various approaches like:
swap(),cyclic sort, etc and how they can not solve this issue. - Then after the interview, I looked at this online and noticed that a solution in
O(N+M)time and not take extra space is not possible. We need to use more time here. And this is something I believe the interviewer could have made a bit more clear to me.
Verdict: ❌ Rejected
📌 Final Outcome
I called the recruiter and he said that my Round 3 feedback was "not that great", so he has sent my candidature to HM and it is currently on hold. If they don't get enough candidates, then they might call me back. But I am counting this as a reject for now.
❌ Rejected
If I had cleared Round 3, then Round 4 would be the final round with the HM where it's the usual HM things like past projects, tech stack and some cultural fit and behavioral questions.
Note
- Notice Period: 45 days
- Group SDE 1 : 1.5 YOE to 4 YOE
- Group SDE 2 : 4+ YOE
- 3 days Work From Office + 2 days WFH
📌 All Interview Outcome
I have been applying to jobs since May 2026 and actively interviewing. Below is the list of companies where I have interviewed till now. Will keep updating this.
