Tower Research

Role: Core Software Engineer Intern

College: Tier 2

Interview Date: Not Specified

Interview Type: Internship

Result: Not Specified

Difficulty: Not Specified

Rounds: 3 (2 Technical + 1 HR)

Topics Asked: Data Structures (Binary Grid, Trees, Graphs, Stack, Queue, Hash Table), Algorithms (DFS, BFS, Binary Search), OOP, Memory Management, Computer Architecture (Cache), System Design (Indexing, Sharding, Caching), Operating Systems, Network Programming, C++ proficiency.

Experience:

This candidate, with 6 months of SDE Intern experience at MakeMyTrip, interviewed for a Core Software Engineer Intern role. The overall experience was described as rigorous yet enjoyable, with a heavy focus on problem-solving, memory management, and computer architecture. System design concepts like indexing, sharding, and caching were also explored in detail.

Round 1 focused on Data Structures and Problem Solving. A specific question involved a binary grid with exactly two islands, asking for the minimum number of 0s to flip to 1s to connect them.

Round 2 covered Data Structures and OOP. Questions included: given multiple orders with statuses, identify completed and cancelled orders (completed orders go through placed, processed, shipped, delivered; cancelled orders can be cancelled after any stage). Other questions were: "Is vector memory contiguous? Why? How?", "Difference between pass-by-value and pass-by-reference", "Threads, cache types (L1, L2, L3), why L1 cache is fast, what is its size, and why don't we increase it?", and "Indexes in databases — why not use multiple indexes, what is partitioning, and what is sharding?".

Round 3 was an HR round. No specific questions were detailed for this round in the provided snippet.