Squad Stack

Role: Product Development Engineer (Intern + FTE)

College: VIT

Interview Date: November 23, 2023

Interview Type: On-Campus Placement (Hybrid - some offline, some online)

Result: Selected (Placed as Product Development Engineer Intern)

Difficulty: Easy to Moderate

Rounds: 5 rounds (Aptitude, Coding, Technical 1, Technical 2/System Design, HR)

Topics Asked: Aptitude, Mathematics, DSA (Arrays, String, Trees), OOPs (Hospital Management System implementation), DBMS (tables, 1NF, 2NF, normalization forms, properties), OS (management of various OS, different types of OS), Projects, AWS Concepts, System Design (Instagram design).

Experience:

Arya, a final-year undergraduate student from VIT, was placed at Squad Stack as a Product Development Engineer Intern through campus placements. The process involved five rounds.

Round 1 (Aptitude/Mathematics Round): This was an online round with 50 questions to be solved in 5 minutes, focusing on accuracy and speed. Around 2,000 students were shortlisted, and then 500-600 were shortlisted for the next round.

Round 2 (Coding Round): This round was conducted offline. There were three coding questions ranging from easy to moderate difficulty, covering topics like arrays, strings, and trees.

Round 3 (Technical Round 1): This round was online and judged on OOPs (implementing a Hospital Management System), DBMS (tables, 1NF, 2NF, normalization forms, properties), and OS (management and types of operating systems). It was also resume-based, with questions about projects. Two DSA questions were asked at the end.

Round 4 (Technical Round 2 / System Design Round): This round involved system design, specifically designing Instagram. The interviewers focused on judging the candidate's understanding of various AWS concepts and DBMS concepts (tables, primary key, foreign key, implementation). This round, along with Technical Round 1, lasted around two hours.

Round 5 (HR Round): This round took place the next day for shortlisted candidates. For Vellore students, it was offline, while for Chennai and Bengaluru campuses, it was online. The nature of the HR round was not explicitly detailed beyond being a standard HR interview.

Tips and Suggestions: The candidate emphasized focusing heavily on core subjects like DBMS, OS, and OOPs, in addition to DSA. For DSA questions, practicing from brute force to the most optimized approach (e.g., two-pointer, reducing space/time complexity) is crucial.