Citi || Senior Java Developer || Rejected
Summary
I interviewed for a Senior Java Developer role at Citi, faced a technical round focused on Spring concepts, and was rejected after the first round.
Full Experience
YOE: 4.5 Recently i appeared for Citi Senior java developer role. I applied through their career portal. I got rejected after first round itself.
First round: Two developer and one manager was there. It started with introduction and then project explanation but verbally including my contributions. Then one of their engineer bombarded me with following spring questions.
- AOP in spring
- Meaning of @aspect and @preauth
- spring.factories
- @autoconfiguration annotation
- @conditiaonOn annotation
- Heap memory structure
- n+1 project and resolution
- few spring security question
- transaction prapagation and isolatoin level
To be frank i completely failed here since i started my career from springboot so not much aware about traditional spring since springboot autoconfiguration takes care of most of them. Before even interview ended, i understood i would get rejected. But this was turning point as well for me because i went deep in spring this time in order to crack interviews and it paid me well where i got selected for a different role for citi itself which i will share soon.
Hope it will help others.
Interview Questions (9)
AOP in Spring
Explain Aspect Oriented Programming (AOP) in the Spring framework.
Meaning of @Aspect and @PreAuthorize
Describe the purpose and usage of the @Aspect and @PreAuthorize annotations in Spring.
spring.factories
What is the spring.factories file and how is it used in Spring Boot auto‑configuration?
@EnableAutoConfiguration Annotation
Explain the role of the @EnableAutoConfiguration annotation in Spring Boot.
@ConditionalOn Annotation
Describe how @ConditionalOn... annotations work and give examples of their use.
Heap Memory Structure
Detail the structure of the Java heap memory and its different regions.
N+1 Problem and Resolution
What is the N+1 query problem in ORM frameworks and how can it be resolved in Spring/JPA?
Spring Security Questions
Discuss common Spring Security concepts that may be asked in an interview (e.g., authentication, authorization, filters).
Transaction Propagation and Isolation Levels
Explain transaction propagation behaviors and isolation levels in Spring transactions.