Epam

Role: Software Engineer A2

College: Tier 1 College

Interview Date: July 2024

Interview Type: Full-Time (Applied via career site)

Result: Selected (Offer rejected)

Difficulty: Medium to Hard

Rounds: 3 rounds

Topics Asked: Java Streams, Linked Lists, Anagrams, Big Integer multiplication, Design Patterns (Singleton, Builder, Factory, Strategy, Observer, Circuit Breaker), AWS (basic knowledge check), Spring Boot, Microservices Architecture, CQRS design pattern, service resiliency, Map vs Flatmap, Java streams laziness, SQL vs NoSQL.

Experience:

The candidate, with 3 years of experience, applied through EPAM's career site.

Round 1: Technical (1.5 hours)
Started with an introduction. Questions included:

• Given a String "Hello Epam, how are you ?", print the frequency of each word using streams only.
• Rotate a linked list by K spots.
• Groups anagrams together (e.g., [eat, tea, tan, ate, nat, bat]).

Working code was expected for all problems.

Round 2: Technical (1.5 hours)
The interviewer, from Armenia, had a difficult accent.

• Question 1: Big Integer multiplication - given numbers as Strings, multiply them and store the result as a string, considering edge cases like "-0". The candidate solved this in 35 minutes.
• Follow-up questions covered design patterns (Singleton, Builder, Factory, Strategy, Observer, Circuit Breaker).
• Asked if the candidate knew AWS (responded "no").
• Questions from the resume and Spring Boot.

The interviewer asked many questions as there was time left.

Round 3: Techno Managerial (1 hour)
Began with an introduction. Questions quickly moved to:

• Microservices architecture.
• Responsibilities in the current project.
• CQRS design pattern.
• How to improve service resiliency.
• Difference between map and flatmap.
• Are Java streams lazy? Explain how.
• SQL vs NoSQL.

This round was theory-based and aimed to grill the candidate. The candidate was selected but rejected the offer due to no scope for negotiation on compensation.