Mastercard

I appeared for the Mastercard SDE Intern recruitment process through my college. The process started with an online coding test, followed by technical and HR discussions. The coding round had two problems. One was a string problem where I had to count consecutive repeating characters and represent their frequencies, similar to run-length encoding. The other was a graph-based problem. I had about an hour, so managing time between the two questions was important. After getting shortlisted, I had my first technical interview. The discussion started with my projects, and the interviewers went into the implementation details rather than just asking me to describe them. I was asked about the technologies I had used, the algorithms involved, and how my projects could be applied to real-world situations. The technical questions then moved toward DSA, DBMS, and OOP. I was asked about SQL, normalization, and database concepts. We also discussed OOP principles with practical examples. One interesting part was a discussion around transactions and the four-party model used in payment systems. That naturally led to questions about encryption and data security. In another technical discussion, I was asked about SQL vs. NoSQL, indexing, paging, and clustering. REST APIs and API integration were also covered. The interviewer was more interested in understanding whether I could explain concepts clearly than in giving textbook definitions. The final HR conversation was relatively straightforward. I was asked why I wanted to join Mastercard, questions about teamwork and handling difficult situations, and some general questions about my college experience. The process was a good mix of DSA, CS fundamentals, projects, and communication, rather than being purely coding-focused.