Cloudera

Role: Software Engineer (Golang)

College: Not Specified

Interview Date: July 2024

Interview Type: Full-Time

Result: On Hold

Difficulty: Not Specified

Rounds: 2 rounds

Topics Asked: Projects, Data Structures (Set, HashMap internals, collisions), Algorithms (3Sum), OS (Deadlock), DBMS (ACID properties, Transactions), Linux commands, System Design (Kafka-like event processing with threads).

Experience:

The candidate applied through the careers page for a Software Engineer (Golang) role. There were 2 interview rounds.

Round 1: DSA/OS/Experience
There were two interviewers. One interviewer started with questions about the candidate's projects, potential enhancements, and explanations of certain features.

• DSA question: 3Sum (LeetCode problem). The candidate provided 3 approaches and the interviewer was satisfied.
• Questions on data structure internals: How a Set data structure works internally, how a HashMap works internally, what happens if there are collisions in two hashes in a HashMap, and how to store and retrieve in such cases.
• ACID properties.
• Deadlock.
• Transactions in a database.
• Some Linux commands.

The interview went well, and the candidate received a call for the second round after 2 hours.

Round 2: HM Round
The hiring manager asked some basic questions regarding the candidate's projects. A coding question was then given to solve in Golang.

• Coding question: Given a sequence of events (e.g., e1:k1, e2:k2, e3:k1, ...), similar to how Kafka works. The task was to process events for a specific key in the order they arrived, using 'k' threads.

The candidate completed the code with 5 minutes remaining. The interviewer was helpful, providing hints and collaborating on the thought process. The interviewer seemed satisfied and provided information about the team.

Result: After following up with HR, the candidate was informed that the result was "ON-HOLD" as they had to choose between two candidates.