Browserstack

Role: SDE 2

College: Not Specified

Interview Date: Not Specified (Post date: Feb 2024)

Interview Type: Full-Time

Result: Rejected (Implied due to misalignment with remote-first culture)

Difficulty: Not Specified

Rounds: 4 rounds

Topics Asked: Data Structures & Algorithms, System Design, Project Discussion, Computer Networking (HTTP, TCP), Behavioral Questions.

Experience:

This experience is for an SDE 2 role.

Round 1: DSA + System Knowledge

• Project-related discussion.
• System Design / Fundamentals: "What happens when you hit a URL like google.com in the browser? Which protocol is used and what steps occur in sequence?"
• "What is TCP and how does the TCP handshake work? How many handshakes does TCP involve?"
• "What does the server send back in response (headers, body)?"
• "What does the browser do with the response (Parsing HTML → Creating DOM Tree → JS Execution → CSS Styling → Painting)?"
• DSA/Logic Question: Given a programming language that only supports numbers from 0-99, determine if adding two numbers will cause overflow. (Logic: remaining = 99 - num1, if num2 > remaining then overflow).

Round 2: Machine Coding Round

• Problem: Build a real-time log viewer (like tail -f in UNIX).
• Task: A server-side program that monitors a large, append-only log file and streams new content in real-time. A web client accessible at http://localhost/log which: displays last 10 lines of the file on page load, receives real-time updates without refreshing, stays static after load.
• Constraints: Log file can be several GB (optimize for reading only last 10 lines), do not re-send full file repeatedly, must support multiple concurrent clients, cannot use off-the-shelf libraries/tools for file tailing. Focus on modularity, testability, code quality, and corner cases.

Round 3: Engineering Manager Round

• Topics: Current role and responsibilities.
• Detailed explanation of one complete project.
• Questions based on the project.
• HLD for scaling the system from Round 2.
• Verbal DSA Question (Approach Only): Given an array of temperatures, for each day, determine how many days to wait until a warmer temperature. Input: Output: .
• Some HR questions also discussed.

Round 4: Director of Engineering (DOE) Round

• Questions: "What challenges are you looking for in the new role?"
• Technical Question: "How would you count the number of unique words in a very large file, where storing everything in memory (e.g., via a map) isn't feasible?"

Feedback given: "You have 5 weeks office regularly — might not align well with BrowserStack's fully remote work culture."