Summary
I recently interviewed at Birdeye for the SDE role, which involved a structured process covering DSA, system design, core Java, and culture fit, ultimately leading to my selection.
Full Experience
🚀 Birdeye | Interview Experience – Software Backend Engineer Recently interviewed at Birdeye for the SDE role, and here’s a quick breakdown of the rounds I went through. The process was a great mix of DSA, low-level/system design, and core Java knowledge — all tied closely to real-world experience. 👇
🔹 Round 1: DSA (Data Structures & Algorithms) Two strong problem-solving questions were asked: 🔢 Frog River Jump (Minimise Max Jump Length) A frog starts at the first stone in a sorted array of positions, must reach the last, and return to the first stone, without revisiting any stone. Jumps are calculated by absolute distance, and the cost is the maximum jump length in the path. Return the minimum possible cost. ✨ Concepts: Binary Search, Greedy, Dynamic Programming.
🔢 Minimum Cost to Split Array Given nums and integer k, split nums into non-empty subarrays to minimise the total cost, where cost = duplicates in subarray + k. ✨ Concepts: Advanced DP, Memoization, Sliding Window Optimisation.
🔹 Round 2: LLD + System Design + SQL I was asked to explain the architecture and design decisions of the projects I worked on at my previous company. Follow-up questions included: ⚙️ How did you handle configuration management and service-to-service communication? 📈 What challenges did you face in scaling? 🔄 How did you handle failures and retries in distributed systems? 🧠 Where did you use caching and what kind?
SQL Questions: 💼 Retrieve the second highest salary in each department. 💰 Find employees who earn more than their managers. These tested understanding of joins, window functions, and nested queries.
🔹 Round 3: Managerial Round Focused on core Java and language design: 🔑 How ConcurrentHashMap differs from HashMap. 🔒 Difference between synchronized and volatile. 🖥️ JVM internals and Garbage Collection behavior. Interesting discussion: 👉 Why is C++ not platform-independent while Java is? Led to a discussion about compilation models, native vs bytecode execution, and JVM abstraction.
🔹 Round 4: Culture Fit Questions on ownership, communication in cross-functional teams, and handling production incidents. Also assessed attitude toward feedback and continuous improvement. 🌱
✅ Verdict - Selected
📌 Overall Experience: A thorough and structured process testing real-world development experience, system thinking, and adaptability. hashtag
Interview Questions (12)
A frog starts at the first stone in a sorted array of positions, must reach the last, and return to the first stone, without revisiting any stone. Jumps are calculated by absolute distance, and the cost is the maximum jump length in the path. Return the minimum possible cost.
Given nums and integer k, split nums into non-empty subarrays to minimise the total cost, where cost = duplicates in subarray + k.
How did you handle configuration management and service-to-service communication?
What challenges did you face in scaling?
How did you handle failures and retries in distributed systems?
Where did you use caching and what kind?
Retrieve the second highest salary in each department.
Find employees who earn more than their managers.
How ConcurrentHashMap differs from HashMap.
Difference between synchronized and volatile.
JVM internals and Garbage Collection behavior.
Why is C++ not platform-independent while Java is? Led to a discussion about compilation models, native vs bytecode execution, and JVM abstraction.