Navi Technologies

Role: SDE-1

College: Tier-1 College (Final year UG CS student)

Interview Date: November 2021

Interview Type: On-Campus

Result: Accepted

Difficulty: Medium

Rounds: 3 rounds

Topics Asked: Aptitude, Maths, Data Structures, Algorithms, DBMS, OOPs, Projects, Internships

Experience:

Navi Technologies visited the campus for SDE-1 roles.

Round 1: Online Test (2 hours)

The online test had 48 questions.

• Aptitude (20 questions): Covered topics like profit/loss, mixtures, ratios, identities, series completion.
• Maths and Aptitude (25 questions): Similar difficulty to aptitude. Sections A and B had a total of 45 questions, with 40 minutes to complete.
• Coding Level A (50 minutes): 2 easy questions. One involved a tricky implementation.
• Coding Level B (30 minutes): 1 easy-medium question.

Specific coding question: Given numbers, choose exactly k pairs and find the maximum absolute difference of the two numbers in every pair (N ~ 10^3). The candidate solved this using DP.

Time was very limited for aptitude/maths questions.

Round 2: Problem Solving and Data Structures (45 minutes)

Around 20 students were shortlisted for this round, conducted on Google Meet.

The interviewer introduced himself, then the candidate introduced themselves.

The interviewer asked about the candidate's favorite Data Structure. The candidate mentioned not having a specific one but was comfortable with arrays, then agreed to discuss trees.

Questions asked:

• "What is a complete tree?"
• Asked about comfortable coding language and the reason for choosing it (C++ due to similarity with C).
• Asked about OOPs concepts, specifically overloading.
• DBMS questions: Denormalization (to save time), difference between SQL and NoSQL.
• DSA questions:
  • Reverse a linked list. The candidate first gave a stack approach (TC & SC) but then explained and coded an O(1) space approach.
  • Discussion on Merge Sort and Quick Sort on arrays and linked lists, their Time Complexity (TC) and Space Complexity (SC).
  • Add 2 linked lists representing numbers. The candidate explained the approach and started coding, but made a blunder.

The candidate noted that they were on the backfoot multiple times but decided not to give up.

Round 3: Hiring Manager / System Design Round

This round was expected to include a Design question based on previous interviews for other students (e.g., Multi-level caching, B/B+ Trees, Design Google Forms, Twitter ER Diagram, sharding, How search happens in SQL, internships, projects). However, no Design question was asked to this particular candidate.

The interviewer read the candidate's resume.

The interview focused on DSA, DBMS, and Design problems in general. The candidate had prepared DS well.

Result: Accepted.