Commvault

Role: SDE Internship

College: SRM

Interview Date: Jul 23, 2025

Interview Type: On-Campus

Result: Not Specified

Difficulty: Medium to Hard

Rounds: 3 rounds

Topics Asked: Aptitude, Java (OOPS, Compiler, Polymorphism, Inheritance, HashMap, Iterators vs Enumerators), DBMS (ACID properties, Normalization, Deadlock), Operating Systems (Process vs Thread, Memory Consumption), Data Structures, Algorithms (Graphs, Greedy Approach, Linked List, Dynamic Programming), System Design

Experience:

This interview process for an SDE Internship began after a pre-screening process, with students from all SRM campuses participating.

Round 1: Online Assessment (45 minutes)

This round was conducted on an online platform with webcam monitoring. It consisted of Aptitude questions and language-specific questions (Java in this case, with options for C++/Java for SDE and Java/C++/Python for SDET). Aptitude questions were basic and logical. Java questions were tricky, mostly related to OOPS concepts. There were a total of 25 questions.

Round 2: Coding Challenge (65 minutes)

This round had 4 coding questions. The candidate solved 2 problems completely and 1 partially. The questions were not very hard, but the time limit was strict. Problems were based on Graphs, Greedy Approach, Linked List, and Dynamic Programming. A specific question mentioned was the Fractional Knapsack problem. 26 students were selected for the next round.

Round 3: Long Coding Challenge / System Design (2 hours)

This round involved designing an mp3 player, without a user interface or file reading. The task was to design a program to store different song details and perform operations. The candidate created a `Song` class (song name, length, copyright, singer), a `Playlist` class (HashMap of SongName to Song), and an `mp3Player` class for logical operations, with a provided `Main` class template. This round tested Object-Oriented Programming skills and logical ability to store data in a self-designed data structure.

Following this, two brilliant interviewers conducted a 2-hour technical discussion. They asked for an introduction and discussed projects. Since the candidate preferred Java, questions included: "What is a JAVA compiler and how does Java run a code?", "Name of JAVA compiler", "How does Java support OOPS & What are OOPS principles?", "Types of Polymorphism and real-life examples of Runtime Polymorphism", "Difference between Runtime and static polymorphism", "Real-life use of Inheritance?", "What is faster Java or C? and Why?", "Why code in Java and not C++?", "Frameworks worked on?", "Implementation of HashMap in Java?", "Why use `Map` in `Map m=new HashMap<>();` instead of `HashMap`?", "Difference between Iterators and Enumerators". Core CS questions covered DBMS (ACID properties, Normalization, Deadlock) and OS (Difference between Process and Thread, memory consumption variations, annotations).