I recently interviewed for a Senior Software Engineer (SSE) role at FalconX in July 2024. I have 5 years of experience.

Round 1: DSA

In the first round, I was expected to write working code on their platform. The first question I faced was Daily Temperatures. I started by explaining the brute force approach, then moved on to the optimized solution. I successfully solved the question and wrote working code, which took about 45 minutes of the interview.

The second question was Best Time to Buy and Sell Stock with K Transactions. I explained the recursive approach and began writing the code. However, my time was up, exceeding by 5 minutes, so the interviewer concluded the round. I was informed that I would progress to the next stage.

Round 2: DSA + LLD

This round also required me to write working code on their platform for the DSA question. The first question was a variation of Longest Common Subsequence (LCS), where I needed to print the actual LCS string, not just its length. Initially, I didn't realize the requirement to print the actual string. I explained the recursive and tabulation approaches to the interviewer and started coding.

Midway through, I recognized that I needed to print the string, which took a little time to figure out. After discussing with the interviewer, I managed to write the code for it. While writing the code, I introduced a typo that consumed some time to debug, and I even needed some help from the interviewer as I became anxious with the ticking clock. Fortunately, the bug was found, and the test cases provided by the interviewer passed.

The interviewer was very kind and gave me an extra 20 minutes since the first question took a significant amount of time. The second question was an LLD of a library management system. The interviewer primarily wanted me to discuss the structure of classes and models and code only the structure, without requiring a fully working application. I was able to write the code structure, and while it might have contained a few mistakes, the interviewer was supportive.

After completing Round 2, I unfortunately received a rejection. I didn't get specific feedback from the recruiter about the exact reasons. I suspect a few possibilities:

• The minimum experience for the SSE role was 5 years, and perhaps there were stronger candidates with more experience in the pipeline. Many of the interviewers themselves were SSEs with over 10 years of experience.
• My coding speed was somewhat slow.
• My debugging skills could be improved. I found myself getting anxious when my code wasn't working, especially with the time constraint, and I realize I need to calmly debug in such situations.