Ciena

Role: C++ Developer

College: Not Specified

Interview Date: July 23, 2025

Interview Type: Experienced Hire

Result: Not Specified

Difficulty: Not Specified (Questions indicate Medium/Hard)

Rounds: 2 rounds

Topics Asked: C++ (Smart Pointers, Copy Constructor, Assignment Operator, Vector Class), Data Structures (Linked Lists, Tries/Prefix Trees for prefix matching)

Experience:

The candidate, with 3+ years of experience, was interviewed at Ciena Gurgaon.

Round 1 (1 hour):

• Implement your own smart pointer class.
• Explain Copy Constructor.
• Explain Assignment operator.
• Given a linked list, modify it such that all odd elements appear first, followed by all even elements reversed. Example: Input: 1->2->3->4->5->6->7->8 Output: 1->3->5->7->8->6->4->2.

Round 2 (1 hour):

• Given different service providers, their prefixes, and call rates. For a given number, find the service provider whose prefix matches the number such that the call rate is minimum. Example provided: Service Provider 1 (972, .1), Service Provider 2 (9725, .02), etc. The interviewer asked what Data Structure would be used to store this information and then to find the minimum call rate. (This suggests a Trie or Prefix Tree data structure).
• Implement your own vector class.