Goldman Sachs Interview Experience | Corporate Treasury – Software Engineering Analyst

Date: 4 days ago

Experience: 2.7 years

Round: Technical Interview (after HackerRank)

Duration: ~60 minutes (Interview ended in ~45 mins)

Platform: Virtual (Google Meet / Zoom)

🧩 Round Details

The round was scheduled for 60 minutes, but it lasted around 45 minutes.

Surprisingly, I was asked only one main coding question — unlike many other Goldman Sachs interviews I had read about (which usually include two coding questions). no response from recuriter

⚙️ Coding Question (Asked in Interview)

The interviewer shared a problem that involved and kafa related question :

A grid (matrix) containing integer values, where you have to move from a source cell to a destination cell while collecting maximum possible points.

You could move in specific directions (up,right), and the goal was to find the path that collects the maximum points.

all test case pass also done with dry run

My journey through the Goldman Sachs SDE interview process was quite extensive, unfolding over several months. It began with an Online Assessment where I tackled two LeetCode medium difficulty DSA problems. This was followed by a Coderpad round, where I faced a graph problem involving virus propagation in a unidirectional, acyclic graph, and a follow-up extending it to multiple initial infection sources.

The Superday consisted of three rounds. The first DSA round presented me with a problem to find the top K tallest buildings from a given list of heights. Another graph problem was asked, which I don't recall precisely, but it was described as a direct LeetCode medium requiring BFS and topological sort concepts, primarily an implementation task. The Software Engineering round delved into my resume, OOPS principles, and different Java HashMap types along with their time complexities. I also encountered a puzzle question and general SDLC practices.

The System Design round focused on designing an LRU cache, alongside further resume-based questions. Finally, the Hiring Manager round was predominantly behavioral, with only a few basic technical inquiries.

I successfully received an offer. The entire process, from initial application to offer letter, took about 2-3 months, with each round's result taking roughly two weeks. Patience is definitely key when interviewing with Goldman Sachs.

My interview journey for the Associate role at Goldman Sachs consisted of several distinct rounds, meticulously testing my skills in various domains. I'm excited to share the details from my 2.3 years of experience.

Coderpad Round 1

This was my first coding assessment, where I was presented with two DSA questions:

1. The first problem was an easier version of a Trie-based question, specifically focusing on implementing insert(word) and countWordsStartingWith(prefix) operations. The interviewer referenced this problem for context.
2. For the second question, I had to find the size of the largest connected component within a forest.

Coderpad Round 2

Following the initial coding round, I faced another set of two DSA challenges:

1. I was tasked with implementing a custom class that would support two primary operations: insert(num) to add a number to the data structure and isTopK(num) to determine if a given number is among the top K most frequent numbers present.
2. The second question involved finding the first non-repeated character in a string. We then delved into an important discussion about how to adapt this algorithm for very large strings that might not fit entirely into a single machine's RAM.

Software Engineering Practices 1

This round shifted focus towards practical software engineering knowledge:

1. I was given a Java code snippet and my task was to identify any issues or bugs present within it.
2. The interviewer then probed my understanding of how HashMaps work internally and questioned me on different types of exceptions in Java.
3. A significant portion of this round was dedicated to a detailed discussion about my previous projects and contributions.

Software Engineering Practices 2

Building on the previous round, this one also focused on engineering practices, with a specific design challenge:

1. I was asked to design a rate limiter. We engaged in a meaningful discussion about various approaches, and I specifically talked about the Leaky Bucket algorithm. Subsequently, I was asked to write a code snippet for its implementation. The discussion also included considerations on how to select appropriate leak rates and bucket sizes for the leaky bucket algorithm.

System Design Round

The final round was entirely dedicated to System Design:

1. The discussion began with the Low-Level Design (LLD) of an oversimplified stock market system. This was a purely verbal discussion, with no coding involved.
2. We then extended this LLD into a High-Level Design (HLD) for the same stock market, which led to discussions about transactions and locking mechanisms within databases.
3. The round concluded with a thorough grilling of my resume, focusing on my experience and technical background.

My interview journey with Goldman Sachs for an Analyst position in Bangalore started with an Online Assessment (OA) conducted on Hackerrank. This assessment primarily tested my fundamental coding skills with problems focused on arrays, strings, and understanding time/space complexity.

Following the OA, I proceeded to a CoderPad Screening. This was a live coding session designed to evaluate my problem-solving speed, code correctness, and clarity of thought. During this round, I was asked to solve two distinct problems: Find the Length of Cycle in an Array and Number of Islands. For the 'Number of Islands' problem, the interviewer specifically guided me to use BFS over DFS, emphasizing its advantage in avoiding potential stack overflow issues.

The final and most intensive stage was the Superday, which comprised four consecutive rounds.

• Round 1 – Data Structures & Algorithms (DSA): My first DSA round presented two challenges. One involved finding the Minimum Characters to Remove from the left, right, or both ends to make a string palindrome. The second was a Binary Search Assignment, which felt very similar in concept to the popular 'Koko Eating Bananas' problem.
• Round 2 – Data Structures & Algorithms (DSA): In the second DSA round, I tackled the classic Coin Change problem, where I had to find the minimum number of coins required to make a specific amount. Additionally, I was given the Container With Most Water problem, which came with an intriguing follow-up question: 'what if the container is tilted?'
• Round 3 – Low-Level Design (LLD): This round shifted focus to design principles. I was tasked with designing a Traffic Light System that could dynamically adjust its wait times based on real-time traffic data, requiring me to consider various system components and interactions.
• Round 4 – Behavioural / HR: The last round was a standard behavioral and HR interview. We discussed my past projects, examples of ownership and challenges I've faced, how I handle tight deadlines and conflicts, and my overall motivation and career goals. A particularly interesting scenario-based question was posed: 'You overhear in a lift that a colleague, who was expecting a salary hike, is actually not going to get one. How would you handle this situation while maintaining professionalism and confidentiality?'

I applied for an Associate role at Goldman Sachs via a referral. My interview journey began with an Online Assessment, which consisted of two medium LeetCode questions. Following that, I had a CoderPad round where I tackled a Trie-based question and a simple DFS problem, all within an hour using C++. The main interview process involved four subsequent rounds. Round 1, focused on DSA, included some resume-based questions, a DSA problem based on hashmaps, and a Binary Search Tree question combined with two pointers. Round 2 delved into more resume-based discussions, a Java concurrency problem, SQL questions, and another LeetCode medium DSA question. Round 3 was a System Design interview where I was asked to design a high-level upload portal for internal users. The final round, lasting 30 minutes, centered on a parking lot problem, specifically how to efficiently calculate prices given varying strategies for weekdays, weekends, and specific hours (like 9 AM - 5 AM). This last round, unfortunately, led to my rejection; I found the interviewer somewhat unresponsive when I sought clarifications.

I recently went through the interview process for an Associate position at Goldman Sachs in Bangalore, which spanned from June to August 2025. The process was conducted online and consisted of an Online Assessment followed by four technical rounds, and finally a Hiring Manager round. I have 3 years of experience.

Online Assessment

The online assessment included 2 LeetCode-style questions: one easy and one medium, which focused heavily on time complexity. I successfully cleared this stage and received an invitation for the interviews within approximately three days.

Round 1 (Technical DSA ~1 hour)

In this round, I was asked to solve two DSA questions by coding on a shared editor. The first problem required converting a fraction string (e.g., "2/5" or "-2/5") into its decimal representation, including handling recurring decimals like "0.(6)" for "2/3". The second question was an easy-medium linked list problem, which I don't fully recall, but I successfully passed all the provided test cases. After two weeks, I received an email inviting me to the Superday rounds.

Superday Round 1 (DSA ~1 hour)

This round involved two DSA questions. The first question was to check if a string has a cycle, for which I had to write optimized code. The second question was to build a calculator, given an expression string like "(2*5+7)", and return the evaluated integer. The interviewer specified that it could include brackets, so I had to parse the expression and correctly handle operator precedence. I was able to solve both questions.

Superday Round 2 (DSA + System Design Lite)

This round combined DSA and a light system design component. The DSA question involved a 2D array: finding the maximum value path when travelling only diagonally up, diagonally down, or right. I explained a recursive approach first and then implemented an optimized solution, followed by discussing variations if movement directions changed. The data structures question asked me to design a structure for efficiently querying if at least two different customers visited the same store on a given day from a log file. I proposed a solution using a Map and Set, and we discussed follow-ups on implementing it with a database and the trade-offs between space and query efficiency.

Superday Round 3 (System Design – Twitter Clone)

This was a dedicated system design round where I had to design Twitter. The first half focused on Low-Level Design (LLD), detailing classes and models for Users, Tweets, and Follows. The second half shifted to High-Level Design (HLD) with an emphasis on scalability, particularly how to notify millions of users simultaneously. The discussion covered various topics like queues, database usage, caching strategies, scaling, microservices, and Kafka.

Superday Round 4 (Hiring Manager)

The final round was with the Hiring Manager. We had a deep dive into the architecture of my most recent project. I also answered questions on Agile methodology, including its pros and cons, and how I handle sprint delays. Leadership and situational questions were posed, such as how I would handle team conflicts and prioritize features against deadlines.

I successfully cleared all rounds and received an offer call for the Associate position an hour after my last Superday interview.

I joined the Coderpad round for an Analyst position at Goldman Sachs. The interviewer started right on time with introductions. I was asked two specific questions. I managed to solve both of them. For the second question, the interviewer provided a couple of hints when I was heading in the wrong direction, which I thankfully picked up and used to solve the problem. I am currently awaiting the final verdict.

A recruiter reached out to me for a Data Engineer (Hadoop/Spark) Associate position, given my 3 years of experience. The interview process began with a HackerRank round, followed by a CoderPad round. The final stage was a Super Day, which comprised multiple elimination rounds. Despite making it to the Super Day, I was ultimately rejected after the second round, as I didn't perform as well as required.

I applied directly on the Goldman Sachs portal, and soon after, a recruiter contacted me, providing a HackerRank test link for the first round.

1st Round - Online Assessment

This round consisted of two medium-difficulty questions. I successfully cleared this round and was invited for the next.

2nd Round - Coding (Codepad)

In this round, the interviewer presented two coding challenges. I was expected to provide the most optimal code. I successfully solved both problems, and all test cases passed within 30 minutes. This performance led to my selection for the Super Day.

Super Day Rounds

A week later, I participated in the Super Day, which involved three rounds conducted on the same day.

1st Round (DSA)

There were two interviewers in this round, each asking one question. I was able to partially solve the first design question but fully completed the second array problem with all test cases passing.

2nd Round (Low-Level Design)

This round began with discussions about my projects, followed by questions on NoSQL and SQL databases. I was then asked to design a system for a restaurant to track its most frequently ordered items. Additionally, there were Java-specific questions covering topics like the static keyword, garbage collection, and multithreading.

3rd Round (High-Level Design)

The final round involved designing a monitoring tool. Unfortunately, I struggled significantly in this round, partly because I felt my previous LLD round hadn't gone well, and I found myself unable to articulate a comprehensive solution.

Verdict

Ultimately, I was rejected after the Super Day rounds.

During my interview process for the SDEII role at Goldman Sachs in Birmingham, I was asked to solve a coding problem. I also noted a link to another LeetCode discuss post which might contain further details about a different problem.

I was reached out by a recruiter for an Associate position with a frontend (React) focus. I have 3 years of experience in product-based companies.

Round 1 (DSA)

This round focused on Data Structures and Algorithms.

• I was asked to find the second largest number in an array.
• The second problem involved processing a 2D array of [name, marks]. My task was to group marks by name, compute the average for each name, and then return the maximum average among all names.

Round 2 (DSA)

The second DSA round proved to be challenging for me.

• The first problem was Search in Rotated Sorted Array.
• The second problem was Find the Kth Largest Integer in the Array.

I didn't perform well in this round, which ultimately led to my rejection.

Round 3 (Javascript)

This round was focused on JavaScript concepts.

• There was a discussion around reduce, filter, and the spread operator.
• I was specifically asked to flatten a 2D array using the reduce method.
• There was also a complex JavaScript problem involving both reduce and filter, though I don't recall the exact specifics.

I received a rejection verdict, primarily due to my performance in Round 2.

This virtual panel interview for an Associate position at Goldman Sachs was a follow-up to my CoderPad interview. The day consisted of three separate rounds, each lasting about 60 minutes, all conducted on the same day.

Round 1: Algo & Data Structures

The first round began with interviewers asking several common Core Java questions related to data structures such as Lists, Sets, and HashMaps. Following this, I was given two coding problems to solve: first, implementing a HashMap from scratch, and second, finding the length of the Longest Increasing Subsequence. There was a minor hiccup as the interviewers expected me to code in Java, but I clarified that I had opted for Python during the recruiter's initial query.

Round 2: Software Design and Architecture

This round started with a brief discussion about the High-level Design of a significant project I had worked on at my previous company. Afterward, we transitioned into a discussion about the High-Level Design (HLD) for a URL Shortener website, similar to tinyurl. The focus was purely on discussing trade-offs and architectural considerations, without the need for any diagrams.

Round 3: SDLC & Resume

The final round was quite relaxed, feeling more like a casual conversation with colleagues. The interviewers thoroughly reviewed my resume, asking detailed questions about my past experiences and responsibilities. We also discussed various Software Engineering practices, including how I approach creating JIRA tickets. Overall, it was a very chill experience and not as intimidating as it initially seemed.

Super Day Verdict: I advanced to the "Bar Raiser" round!