Agoda

Role: SSE (Software Engineer II)

College: Not Specified (BTech, SDE2 at a "big tech" company, India)

Interview Date: June 2024

Interview Type: Full-Time

Result: Selected (Offer, after negotiation)

Difficulty: Medium (Based on self-verdict of "Hire/Strong Hire" and Hackerrank coding)

Rounds: 5 rounds

Topics Asked: Behavioral, Data Structures, Algorithms, System Design

Experience:

This candidate, an SDE2 from a "big tech" company, received an offer from Agoda Bangkok in June 2024. The process took over 2 weeks to hear back after applying.

Round 1: Recruiter Screening: A 30-minute call covering introduction, salary expectations, etc.

Round 2: DSA (1 hr): This round involved two coding questions on HackerRank, requiring full code implementation and passing test cases.

• Q1: Given a string, reverse each word in the string. Input: "Hello Bangkok:)" Output: "Bangkok:) Hello".
• Q2: Given an array of 0s and 1s (0 for empty, 1 for flower bed), and an integer k, determine if k more flower beds can be placed such that no two flower beds are adjacent. Multiple follow-ups related to optimizations and early computation were discussed.

The round lasted about 1 hour and went well. Self-verdict: Hire/Strong hire.

Round 3: Platform Round (1 hr): Started with a 5-minute intro and 10-15 minutes of discussion on the candidate's current project. Then, a System Design question was posed: designing a file storage service. The requirements were relatively simple, not requiring conflict handling. This round also went well. Self-verdict: Strong Hire.

Round 4: System Design / HM (1 hr): Conducted by a manager. After a 5-minute intro, a few behavioral questions were asked. The discussion then moved to scenario-based system design questions involving a flight booking system. The interviewer already had an HLD and asked "how will you...?" or "what if...?" type questions. Self-verdict: Hire.

Round 5: System Design / HM (1 hr): This round was conducted by the Hiring Manager and was another system design round. The task was to design a system for managing and retrieving flight prices from different providers. The design was not overly complex, but the interviewer added scenario-based questions and new requirements/constraints, such as rate limiting based on provider limits and challenges in a distributed data center environment. The HM also presented some problems Agoda had encountered internally. Self-verdict: Strong Hire.

Post-Interview: The candidate received positive feedback and discussed salary expectations. An offer was presented, which was initially lower than expected but was increased after negotiation.