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Akamai Technologies | SWE 1 | Remote/Bangalore | Feb 2025
Summary
I interviewed for a Software Engineer 1 role at Akamai Technologies. My initial attempt resulted in a rejection, but after requesting a second chance with a different team, I was extended an offer.
Full Experience
First Interview Attempt:
My first interview attempt for the SWE 1 role at Akamai Technologies consisted of three rounds.
Round 1 (Technical): I was asked three coding questions:
- Balanced Parenthesis Problem
- N closest points to origin
- Number of ways to reach (n-1, m-1) from (0,0) in an nxm grid
I was able to successfully answer all these questions and subsequently received a call for the second round.
Round 2 (Technical): This round also had three questions:
- Implement LRU Cache
- Find median from a data stream
- Find minimum in a sorted rotated array
I managed to answer the first and third questions completely. However, I struggled to fully solve the 'Find median from a data stream' problem. Despite not completing it, I proposed several approaches, which the interviewer seemed satisfied with, noting that it was an interesting problem I should review.
Round 3 (Managerial): This round involved standard managerial questions.
Result: Rejected
I was rejected after the first set of interviews. I believe the reason might have been my lack of prior experience with multi-threading programming, which I gathered was a requirement for the role.
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Second Interview Attempt:
After reaching out to the recruiter, I was fortunate enough to get a second chance to interview with a different team.
Round 1 (Technical): This round again had coding questions:
- A variation of the 'Best Time to Buy and Sell Stocks' problem. This one was quite tricky, but I was pleasantly surprised that I managed to figure it out.
- Lots of theoretical questions on networking.
- K most frequent elements.
I was able to answer all the questions in this round.
Round 2 (Technical + Managerial): This combined round included a mix of questions:
- An easy-level coding question that I solved using normal sorting; I don't recall the exact problem.
- Numerous questions on networking, covering both theoretical concepts and implementation aspects.
- High-Level Design (HLD) for a specific requirement provided by the interviewer.
- Standard managerial questions.
- Questions about my current responsibilities.
- Behavioral questions focusing on teamwork, ownership, and challenges I've faced.
The interviewer seemed mostly satisfied with my responses.
Result: Offered
Interview Questions (9)
Given a string containing just the characters '(', ')', '{', '}', '[' and ']', determine if the input string is valid. An input string is valid if open brackets must be closed by the same type of brackets and open brackets must be closed in the correct order.
Given an array of points where points[i] = [xi, yi] represents a point on the X-Y plane and an integer N, return the N closest points to the origin (0, 0). The distance between two points on the X-Y plane is the Euclidean distance (i.e., √(x1 - x2)² + (y1 - y2)²).
Given an m x n grid, find the number of unique paths from the top-left corner (0,0) to the bottom-right corner (n-1, m-1). You can only move down or right at any point in time.
Design and implement a data structure for a Least Recently Used (LRU) cache. It should support the following operations: get(key) - Get the value of the key if the key exists in the cache, otherwise return -1. put(key, value) - Set or insert the value if the key is not already present. When the cache reaches its capacity, it should invalidate the least recently used item before inserting a new item.
The median is the middle value in an ordered integer list. If the size of the list is even, there is no middle value, and the median is the average of the two middle values. Design a data structure that supports adding new integers to the data stream and efficiently finding the median of all elements added so far.
Suppose an array sorted in ascending order is rotated at some pivot unknown to you beforehand (e.g., [0,1,2,4,5,6,7] might become [4,5,6,7,0,1,2]). Find the minimum element of this array. You may assume no duplicate elements exist in the array.
Given an integer array nums and an integer k, return the k most frequent elements. You may return the answer in any order.
Design a high-level architecture for a given system requirement (specific requirements were provided by the interviewer, but not detailed in the post).
General questions about past work experiences, problem-solving approaches, team collaboration, leadership, current responsibilities, and career aspirations. Specific behavioral topics included teamwork, ownership, and handling challenges.