Rapido

Role: SDE-1

College: Not Specified

Interview Date: January - February 2022

Interview Type: On-Campus

Result: Selected

Difficulty: Medium

Rounds: 3 rounds

Topics Asked: Data Structures, Algorithms (Boyer Moore, House Robber), Operating Systems (Compiler, Process vs Thread), DBMS (Indexing, Joins, Normalization and Denormalization), System Design (Student Management System), Networking (URL, TCP vs UDP).

Experience:

The SDE-1 interview process consisted of three rounds.

Round 1: Online Coding Interview (Easy)

This round included two coding problems:

• Boyer Moore Algorithm For Pattern Searching: Find all occurrences of a pattern in a given text and return an array of indexes.
• House Robber: A thief wants to loot houses but cannot loot two consecutive houses. Find the maximum amount of money they can loot.

The candidate had previously solved the "House Robber" problem on LeetCode and quickly provided a recursive function with memoization. Tips included explaining thought processes while writing code.

Round 2: Video Call (Medium)

This round focused on OS and DBMS concepts. The interviewer was friendly and engaged in a good discussion for about an hour. Questions included:

• What is a compiler? How does it work? What happens when we compile a code?
• What is a Process? Difference between process and thread?
• What is indexing? What are joins? Explain all joins with examples?
• What is normalization and denormalization?

Round 3: Video Call (Medium)

This round involved system design and more conceptual questions. The interviewer provided hints when the candidate was stuck. Questions included:

• Asked to design a student management system.
• What happens when you enter an URL? Difference between TCP and UDP?
• House Robber (again, indicating a potential follow-up or variation of the previous problem).

The overall interview experience was described as very good.