I'm a 2022 computer science graduate with about 13 months of combined internship and full-time experience. I applied for the SDE1 Backend role at Cred in Bengaluru by directly messaging a recruiter in September 2022. The following day, I received an online assessment link and completed it promptly.

The Online Assessment was 90 minutes long, featuring one medium and two hard LeetCode questions focusing on strings, trees, dynamic programming, and combinatorics. I managed to complete it, though I spent some time debugging a tree-diameter algorithm.

Soon after, HR informed me that all subsequent interviews would be scheduled for the next Saturday. My first round was a 150-minute Low-Level Design (LLD) challenge. I was given a HackerRank repository with helper functions and a basic code structure. My task was to implement the logic for a full-fledged application, emphasizing clean, modular, and optimal OOPs and Tries concepts. No UI or API was required; the focus was purely on logical functions. I was expected to write unit tests and push my code within the timeframe. While I pushed the code, I forgot to submit the tests, but quickly rectified it by emailing the project to the interviewer. My implementation skills, optimizations, and clean code thoroughly impressed the interviewer.

Within 30 minutes, HR called to schedule my second round an hour later. This 90-minute interview was conducted in Google Docs with screen sharing. It involved puzzle questions, problem-solving, low-level design, data structures, and algorithms, particularly trees, hashmaps, tries, DSU, and probabilistic algorithms. The discussion was very in-depth, especially concerning probabilistic algorithms. The interviewer was less interested in me writing code and more focused on discussing my ideas and approaches to real-world applications of Cred products, requiring me to identify the perfect data structure, algorithm, or design trade-offs. I confidently answered all questions, further impressing the interviewer, which quickly led me to the next round.

The final Managerial Round lasted 90 minutes. We discussed my past projects, my previous organization, and how I could scale or design specific product parts. This round heavily focused on system design concepts like load-balancing, concurrency, and in-server caches. Despite my frontend background and fumbling some backend terminology (like not knowing 'Memcached' when I mentioned 'in-server caches'), the manager was very impressed with my resume, especially my small successes in competitive programming. Although I was exhausted by this point and didn't perform perfectly on the HR-type questions, my strong CV helped compensate.

Within one working day after the managerial round, HR called me with an offer, which I accepted after sharing my previous compensation details.