Cred

Role: SDE1 - Backend

College: Tier-3 college in CSE (2022 grad)

Interview Date: September 2022

Interview Type: Off-Campus (Direct DM to recruiter)

Result: Selected (Implied)

Difficulty: Hard

Rounds: 5 rounds (Online Assessment + 4 Technical Rounds)

Topics Asked: Online Assessment (Strings, Trees, DP, Combinatorics), LLD (OOPs, Tries, clean code, unit tests), DSA & Puzzles (trees, hashmaps, tries, DSU, probabilistic algorithms), System Design (load-balancing, concurrency, in-server caches), Managerial (behavioral, values, belief system)

Experience:

This candidate, a 2022 CSE graduate from a Tier-3 college with 10 months of internship and 3 months of FTE experience, secured an SDE1 Backend role at CRED after directly messaging a recruiter. The overall interview process was described as tough, "at least more than many FAANG companies."

Online Assessment (90 minutes): This round consisted of 1 LeetCode medium and 2 LeetCode hard-level questions covering Strings, Trees, DP, and Combinatorics. The candidate solved all three problems.

Round 1: LLD Round (150 minutes): Conducted on HackerRank, this round required implementing logic for a full-fledged application (without UI/API). The task involved working with provided helper functions and code structure to write clean, modular, and optimal code, incorporating OOPs concepts and Tries. The interviewer focused on logic, functions, and trade-offs. The candidate was also expected to write unit tests.

Round 2: DSA & Puzzles (90 minutes): This round took place in Google Docs with screen sharing. It included puzzle questions, problem-solving, low-level design, and Data Structures and Algorithms. Topics primarily focused on trees, hashmaps, tries, Disjoint Set Union (DSU), and probabilistic algorithms. There was an in-depth discussion, especially on probabilistic algorithms, with questions often relating to real-world applications of CRED products.

Round 3: System Design (90 minutes): This round involved discussions on past projects and scaling/designing parts of products. Key topics included load-balancing, concurrency, and in-server caches, essentially various system design concepts in a full-fledged manner. The interviewer was less interested in coding and more in discussion of ideas.

Round 4: Managerial Round (60 minutes): This was a discussion with an Engineering Team Lead, focusing on the candidate's behaviors, values, and belief system. It included a long discussion about the candidate's internship experience.