Visa Interviews

I applied for a Software Staff Engineer (SSE) position at VISA and was invited to take a CodeSignal Online Assessment. The assessment presented a set of four distinct coding challenges.

I managed to solve the first two questions within a reasonable time; the first took only about 2 minutes. The second question, which involved time parsing, took approximately 30 minutes due to the necessary formatting and careful handling of edge cases.

The third question, however, proved to be quite difficult, particularly with the padding requirements for newspaper paragraph formatting, and I couldn't complete it. By the time I reached the fourth question, I was out of time due to struggling with the previous one. I didn't even attempt the last problem but realized it wasn't straightforward.

Observing that many other candidates reportedly received easier OAs and solved all questions, I anticipate a rejection.

I just completed my CodeSignal round for Visa. It had 4 questions: two easy, one medium, and one hard. My strategy was to quickly solve the easy ones first, then move to the medium, and finally spend as much time as possible on the hard one. I successfully completed the first two easy questions (Q1 and Q2), then proceeded to the medium one (Q4), and concluded with the hard question (Q3).

I just completed the Codesignal assessment for Visa and failed. I want to share the exact questions I received to help others who are preparing for this assessment. I hope this helps you.

I recently took the Visa CodeSignal test, hoping to share my experience and the questions I encountered to help others preparing for similar assessments. The test was conducted for a role in Bangalore in November 2025.

The CodeSignal test featured four coding questions, with varying difficulty levels. I've tried my best to recall and explain these questions, though the exact wording or minor details might not be 100% precise.

Overall, I found the test to be on the easier side. My general advice would be to focus on easy to medium level Data Structures and Algorithms problems, particularly those involving arrays, strings, and basic simulation logic.

I received information from our placement cell about VISA's Summer internship role on campus. After a couple of reschedules, the Online Assessment (OA) was finally set for October 24th. The OA was conducted on CodeSignal and comprised 4 questions, totaling 600 marks, with a time limit of 70 minutes. We received the access link a day prior but were required to take the assessment at the scheduled time in our college lab.

I had the opportunity to participate in Visa's campus recruitment drive for a 2-month SDE Intern role, which included an Online Assessment. The OA was structured with a 70-minute time limit and presented four distinct coding problems: two easy, one medium, and one hard. I focused my efforts on solving each problem efficiently. I managed to fully solve three of the four questions within the time limit and made substantial progress on the fourth one. My final score for the assessment was 531 out of a possible 600. I'm currently in the process of waiting for an update regarding the next stages of the interview.

Visa SDS Interview – Round 1 Learnings and Questions

Hey! Recently I interviewed for an SDS (Senior Data Scientist) position at Visa. The first round comprised of coding questions testing SQL and Python. Sharing some learnings and questions for the same below.

SQL Question

You are given the following tables:

1. WatchedMovies

2. MovieActors

3. GenreActors

4. Actors

Problem Statement

Write a SQL query to find the actors you would be interested in based on your favorite genre — the genre for which you have watched the most movies.

Return their actor_id and age, sorted by age in descending order.

Python Question

You are given:

• A list of valid words that can be used as variable names in a programming language.
• A string written in CamelCase format, which may or may not start with a capital letter.

Task

Write a function that determines whether the CamelCase string can be split into individual words such that all resulting words exist in the provided list of valid words.

The function should be case-insensitive.

Example

Input

valid_words = ["my", "variable", "name", "parse", "json", "data"]

I submitted multiple applications through different job portals, and one of the recruiters contacted me on my mobile.

Background:

YOE: 2.5 years, Currently working at a PBC

Round 1 : Code Signal Assesment (70 min)

This consisted of 4 DSA problems. I don't remember the exact questions, but the first two were easy, the third was of medium difficulty, and the fourth was medium to hard.

Round 2 : Coding Skills - Data Structures - Problem Solving (45 min)

https://leetcode.com/problems/parallel-courses-ii/description/
https://leetcode.com/problems/non-overlapping-intervals/description/
https://leetcode.com/problems/minimum-moves-to-equal-array-elements-ii/description/

I think the interviewer had quite high expectations. I wasn't able to solve the first question. He was expecting a direct solution within 5 minutes as if I had solved the question earlier, not giving enough time to think through (After the interview, I looked up the solution and realized that I wouldn’t have been able to solve that question even with the full 45 minutes.). When he realized I couldn't solve the first question, he asked the next two questions.

After the DSA problems, moved on to some theoretical questions about Java and Spark. I don’t remember all of them, but a few included:

1. Checked and Unchecked Exceptions in Java
2. IOC in Spring
3. Drivers and Executors in Spark etc.,

Received a rejection mail almost instantly.

Hi Folks,
Applied for Staff SE (Backend) role at VISA. As per JD, it requires 7.5+ YOE, but somehow I got the OA link.

Currently, SSE @ Walmart having 6 YOE.
College: Tier-3

OA

No. of Questions: 4

#1:

Imagine that you have a time machine. You are given an array years. You start in the year years[0]. Next, you need to travel to years[1], then to years[2], and so on. Your task is to calculate the time required to visit all the years from the list in order.
The time required to travel from the year a to the year b is calculated as follows:

0 hours if A == B
1 hour if A < B (going forwards in time)
2 hours if A > B (going backwards in time)

Example:
For years = [2000,1990,2005,2050], the output should be solution(years) = 4.
First you go from 2000 to 1990, which requires 2 hours.
Then you go from 1990 to 2005, which requires 1 hour.
Then you go from 2005 to 2050, which requires 1 hour.
In total, you need 2 + 1 + 1 = 4 hours.
For years = [2000,2021,2005], the output should be solution(years) = 3.

Solution:

public int solution(int[] years) {
int totalTime = 0;
for (int i = 1; i < years.length; i++) {
if (years[i] == years[i - 1]) {
totalTime += 0;
} else if (years[i] > years[i - 1]) {
totalTime += 1;
} else {
totalTime += 2;
}
}
return totalTime;
}

#2:

You are given two positive integers a and b as strings, and your task is to return a string of their digit-wise sums.

Add every 'i'th digit of the first string to the 'i'th digit of the second string, both counted from the end. If the 'i'th digit of one of the strings is absent, its sum will be the 'i'th digit of the other string. Return a string of those sums concatenated with each other.
Example:
For a = "99" and b = "99", the output should be solution(a, b) = "1818".
The sums of both, the first and the second numbers are 18, so the answer is 1818.
For a = "11" and b = "9", the output should be solution(a, b) = "110".
The sum of the first numbers from the end is 10, and the sum of the second numbers from the end is 1, so the answer is 110.

Solution:

public static String solution(String a, String b) {
StringBuilder result = new StringBuilder();
int maxLength = Math.max(a.length(), b.length());

    for (int i = 0; i < maxLength; i++) {
        int digitA = (i < a.length()) ? a.charAt(a.length() - 1 - i) - '0' : 0;
        int digitB = (i < b.length()) ? b.charAt(b.length() - 1 - i) - '0' : 0;
        int sum = digitA + digitB;
        result.insert(0, sum);
    }

    return result.toString();

}

#3:

You're given an array of integers representing fruits on a conveyor belt. Your goal is to count how many contiguous subarrays have at least k non-overlapping identical fruit pairs. A pair is formed when two of the same fruit appear in the subarray, and each fruit can be part of only one pair within that subarray.

For example, in the array [1, 3, 3, 1] with k = 1, the valid subarrays include [1, 3, 3], [3, 3, 1], [1, 3, 3, 1], and [3, 3]—each containing at least one valid pair.

Solution:

public static int solution(int[] fruits, int k) {
int n = fruits.length;
int count = 0;

for (int start = 0; start < n; start++) {
    Map<Integer, Integer> freq = new HashMap<>();
    int pairs = 0;

    for (int end = start; end < n; end++) {
        int fruit = fruits[end];
        freq.put(fruit, freq.getOrDefault(fruit, 0) + 1);

        // If the count of a fruit reaches an even number, it means a new pair is formed.
        if (freq.get(fruit) % 2 == 0) {
            pairs++;
        }

        if (pairs >= k) {
            count++;
        }
    }
}
return count;

}

#4:

You are managing a network of distribution centers that handle package deliveries. Each center has a different capacity and must process a certain number of packages before needing a reset.

You are given an array of integers 'centerCapacities' where centerCapacities[i] is a value between 1 and 5 representing the maximum number of packages that the i-th distribution center can process before requiring maintenance.
You are also given an array of strings 'dailyLog' where dailyLog[i] can be one of the following:

"PACKAGE" - a new package arrives for processing
"CLOSURE <j>" - the j-th distribution center temporarily closes for renovations

Packages are sent to centers in sequential order - each center processes as many packages as it can based on its capacity defined by centerCapacities[i] before packages are sent to the next available center. After a complete rotation through all centers (returning to center 0), the capacity of all operational centers is restored to full, but closed centers remain unavailable.
Notes:
The distribution system bypasses any closed centers when allocating packages.
You can assume at least one center remains operational throughout the process.
Return the index of the distribution center that processed the most packages. If multiple centers processed the same maximum number of packages, return the center with the highest index.

Partially solved this.

Got response from recruiter that OA is cleared. Recruiter asked for expected comp etc and I asked for 45 base. Next day, received rejection mail.

#visa #oa

Current Experience: 1.10 Years

College: Tier-2

Previous Organization: One of the MNCs

Applied through portal.

OA

The Online Assessment included the following problems:

• Longest Substring Without Repeating Characters
• Letter Combinations of a Phone Number

1st Round (Coding)

This round involved coding questions.

2nd Round (Technical Discussion)

AGENDA: Focus areas for SWE framework Coding Quality Engineering Fundamentals Collaborate as OneVisa/Execute

Questions covered:

• Spring boot annotations - controller, service, transactional
• Autowiring - what it is? How it works?
• SQL vs NoSQL - vertical scaling vs horizontal scaling
• Pass by reference and pass by value
• Static vs non static
• 2-sum problem
• 3-sum problem

During writing code, the interviewer was asking questions like "why you used this and that type of questions."

SQL questions:

• Problem: print number of students in each dep where cgpa > 9

  My query: select Dep, count(*) as count from student group by Dep having cgpa > 9;

• Problem: duplicate row in the table

  My query: select * from student groupby studentId having count(*) > 1;

Outcome:

I was not able to provide an optimized solution for the 3-sum problem. I gave an N^2+NlogN solution and he was expecting an N^2 solution only.

I was also not able to provide correct answers for a few conceptual Java questions.

Verdict: rejected.

Other interview experience: https://leetcode.com/discuss/post/6834384/all-interview-experiences-switch-journey-vpu1/

About Me

• Education: B.Tech in ECE from NIT (2024 Graduate)
• Years of Experience: 10 months at a product-based startup

Round 1: CodeSignal Assessment

• Format: 4 coding questions
  • 1 Easy
  • 1 Medium
  • 1 Medium-Hard
  • 1 Hard
• Outcome: Solved all of them successfully.

Round 2: Technical Interview (20th May)

• Type: Purely discussion-based (Approx. 1 hour)
• What Happened:
  • Deep dive into resume and past work (~30 mins)
  • Detailed discussion on projects and contributions at the current company
    • For example, when Kafka was mentioned:
      • Why Kafka?
      • Alternatives?
      • Architecture-level questions and trade-offs
  • 1 DSA Question:
    • Problem: Given a log file with timestamps and IPs, rate-limit IPs making more than x requests in a 10-minute window.
    • Started with: What is a DDoS attack? How to prevent it?
    • Approach discussed: Sliding Window
    • Follow-up: What if the log file is in GBs?
      • Suggested solution: Use external sorting to process large-scale data

Round 3: Technical Interview (22nd May)

• Deep dive into resume, tech stack, and projects (~40 mins)
  • Detailed questions on:
    • Project architecture
    • Tech stack decisions
    • Work at the current company
• DSA Question:
  • A variation of the Aggressive Cows problem (SPoJ – AGGRCOW)
  • Required applying binary search on answers. Wrote code with all edge cases covered.

Round 4: Hiring Manager Round (26th May)

• Got grilled on resume and system design (~40 mins)
  • In-depth discussion on:
    • Work done at current company
    • System architecture choices
    • Scalability and performance trade-offs
  • Used Excalidraw to draw and explain architecture
• Behavioral Questions covering collaboration, ownership, decision-making
• Ended with me asking questions about the team, role expectations, and future direction

• Received positive feedback the next day.

Hi all, I just wanted to share my Visa interview experience with you all. Total it had 4 rounds.

Current experience : 1 year 10 months Current title : SDE-1

1st round - Online coding test on Codesignal. 2nd round - First technical interview. 3rd round - Second technical interview 4th round - HM round.

1st round :

I dont exactly remember the questions but the first 2 problems are gonna be easy level questions. 3rd question would be medium to hard. 4th question would be hard to tackle.

2nd round : First technical interview was scheduled where a question on graphs was there.

Question : You have been given a list of Strings where the logic of building adjacency list would be using the first and last letters of the string. For example : "abc","def","cfg","gza" Then abc is connected to cfg because the last letter of string abc is c and the first letter of cfg is 'c'.

The question was to find a cycle whether it exists in this graph or not.

3rd round : Second technical interview was scheduled right after the second round on the same day itself.

Question : Given String in the input with source and destination cities. For example : "Mumbai" -> "Bangalore", "Goa" - > "Dehradun", "Calcutta"->"Mumbai", "Dehradun"->"Calcutta"

Here i had to find the source station starting from any city, that would complete the travel of all the cities mentioned. i.e. the answer for this question would be "Goa"->"Dehradun","Dehradun"->"Calcutta", "Calcutta"->"Mumbai", "Mumbai"->"Bangalore" Here i am able to visit all the cities and this is the only possible answer for this question.

I told the graph approach using DFS, but there is also one HashSet approach to this.

4th round : Last round was conducted by the hiring manager, he asked some behavioural questions and just wanted to check if I wanted to learn and grow in my career.

That's all for this interview experience.

My interview process at Visa for a Software Engineer role consisted of three distinct rounds, each conducted on separate days.

Round 1: Data Structures & Algorithms (1 hour)
This round focused on typical DSA problems. I was asked to solve two problems:

1. Print the top view of a binary tree.
2. A medium-level LeetCode question, the specifics of which I don't recall.