Trilogy

Trilogy Innovations came to our campus for the SDE Intern hiring, and honestly, this was one of the more coding-heavy processes I went through. The first round was an online coding test. There were multiple programming questions and the difficulty was noticeably higher than the usual campus OA. The questions were more CP-oriented, so simply knowing standard DSA templates wasn't enough. I remember spending a lot of time on the first few questions because they looked straightforward initially but had some tricky constraints. The test included problems around graphs, DP, trees and other algorithmic concepts. I managed to solve some of the questions, but couldn't complete the entire test. After the coding round, there was an aptitude/CCAT-style round. This one was completely different from the coding test. It had a large number of questions with a very short time limit. The questions themselves weren't particularly difficult, but the speed required was the main challenge. The next round was a resume and project discussion. The interviewer asked me to pick one of my projects and explain it from the beginning. I initially expected this to be a relatively simple resume round, but the interviewer went much deeper than I expected. Questions were asked about the architecture, database, why I selected particular technologies, alternatives I had considered and what could go wrong in the system. At one point, the interviewer picked a small implementation detail from my project and started asking follow-ups around it. This made me realize that putting something on the resume basically means being prepared to defend every part of it. The discussion also covered SQL vs NoSQL, database design and some backend concepts. I was comfortable with most of the questions, although there were a couple of project-specific follow-ups where I had to think for a while. After clearing that round, I had the DSA interview. The interviewer gave me a problem involving a tree and asked me to first explain my approach before writing the code. The problem wasn't something I had seen directly before. I started with a brute-force idea and then tried to improve it. The interviewer gave me a couple of hints when I got stuck, and eventually I was able to figure out the main observation. I coded the solution and discussed its complexity. There were follow-up questions about how the approach would change for larger constraints. The round was less about remembering a particular LeetCode problem and more about how I could actually reason through an unfamiliar problem. The final technical round was the toughest one for me. Instead of just another standard DSA question, the interviewer gave me an open-ended problem and asked how I would design a solution for it. We discussed the requirements first and then went into possible architecture and implementation choices. There were questions around scalability, databases, APIs and how different components would communicate. The interviewer also went back to my projects and asked how I would modify one of them if the number of users increased significantly. I talked about caching, database optimization and separating different parts of the application, but some of my answers were still fairly high-level. The discussion then moved towards general problem-solving. I was given a hypothetical product scenario and asked how I would approach building it from scratch. This was probably where I struggled the most. I was used to solving well-defined CP problems, but the question didn't have one obvious correct answer. I had to ask questions, define assumptions and build the solution step by step. After the final round, I was waiting for the result. Unfortunately, I wasn't selected for the SDE Intern role. Looking back, the biggest difference with Trilogy was the depth of the process. The coding round required strong problem-solving, but clearing the coding round alone wasn't enough. The interviewers also went very deep into projects and expected candidates to reason through open-ended technical problems. The process was definitely difficult, but it gave me a much better idea of the kind of preparation I need. For a company like Trilogy, I would focus heavily on competitive programming and DSA, especially trees, graphs and DP, while also making sure I know every technical detail of the projects on my resume. The project round was probably the biggest lesson for me. It's easy to put technologies on a resume, but when an interviewer starts asking why this database, why this architecture, what happens if this fails, and how would you scale it, you really need to have built and understood the project yourself. Even though I didn't make it through, the process was a good learning experience and one of the interviews where I felt the questions genuinely pushed my problem-solving ability.