Hi everyone, I recently had the opportunity to interview with Rakuten Symphony for a Software Engineer Role. I currently have 2 years and 2 months of experience in a product-based company. A recruiter contacted me via Naukri, and the interview was scheduled.

Round 1 - Technical Round (1hr. +)

This round started with a basic introduction and discussion about my previous company work experience. We then moved on to two DSA questions: one based on hashmap (medium level) and another on greedy (easy). I was asked to code them and explain their time complexity, with further questions on how to optimize the code.

Following this, the interviewer delved into questions related to Spring Boot and Hibernate. They asked about how AutoConfiguration in Spring Boot works internally, Dependency Injection, Bean lifecycle, and some follow-up questions based on my answers. In Hibernate, I was questioned on transactional annotations, the difference between save and persist, and how we use Hibernate for performance optimization.

Round 2 - System Design (1hr. +)

After a brief introduction and a few questions related to multithreading and OOPS, I was asked to design a Bike Rental System based on provided requirements. Additionally, I was asked to implement the Observer Design Pattern and the Singleton Design Pattern.

Round 3 - HR

This round involved general HR questions and salary negotiation.

Verdict -- Selected!