ClearTax (Clear) Interview Experience (Machine Coding + System Design + Hiring Manager) | Jan 2026

About Me :

• Current Domain: FinTech
• Current Role: SDE 2
• Total Experience: ~3 years (2 years 11 months)
• Current CTC: 27 LPA (23 LPA fixed + 4 LPA yearly fixed bonus) (Ignoring ESOPs)

Initial HR Contact

I first received a call from an HR representative from Careernet (consultancy).
She informed me that they were hiring for ClearTax, collected my basic details over the phone, and shared the JD via email. She mentioned that she would get back to me once my profile was reviewed by the ClearTax team.

The next day, she called again and confirmed that my profile was shortlisted. We then proceeded with Round 1.

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Round 1: Machine Coding Round (1.5 Hours)

Problem: Design an expense sharing application (Splitwise-like).

This was a proper machine coding round, not just pseudo-code or discussion. The interviewer shared a very detailed problem statement with multiple scenarios and edge cases.

Core Requirements

• Create users with: (userId, name, email)
• Add expenses with different split types: EQUAL, EXACT, PERCENT
• Maintain balances between users (who owes whom and how much)
• Show balances: For all users (Simplified balances)
• Show balances: For a specific user
• Handle rounding to 2 decimal places
• Validation on Split Type.

Expectations

• Modular, readable, and extensible code
• Proper separation of concerns
• Avoid writing everything in a single file
• Easy to add new split types in the future
• A main method to demonstrate functionality
• (Optional) Unit tests (In Given time I was not able to write.)

My Approach

• Designed clean domain models:
• User
• Expense
• Split (with polymorphic implementations for EQUAL / EXACT / PERCENT)
• Used a balance sheet structure to track user-to-user balances
• Paid attention to:
• Decimal precision and rounding rules
• Validation logic
• Output formatting as per problem statement
• Explained design decisions while coding
• Language used Java 21

I was able to complete the problem within the given time and demonstrate all required scenarios.

Self-evaluation: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ (9 /10)

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Round 2: System Design Round (1 Hour)

Problem Statement: Design a Job Scheduler System similar to Airflow / Temporal.

Functional Requirements

• Create a job (job metadata and configuration)
• Execute jobs:
  • At a scheduled time
  • On-demand execution
• Show execution history

Discussion Points

• High-level architecture
• Separation of Job creation, scheduler and worker nodes
• Job metadata storage
• Execution lifecycle and states
• Persistence of execution history

Where I Lagged

One area where I felt slightly weak was:

• Auto-scaling worker nodes when job volume increases
• I discussed queues, metrics, and horizontal scaling at a high level
• But couldn’t go very deep into concrete auto-scaling strategies.

Overall, it was a healthy discussion, and the interviewer was engaged.

Self-evaluation: ⭐⭐⭐⭐☆ (7.5/10)

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Round 3: Hiring Manager Round (1 Hour)

This round started with introductions and then went into a deep dive into one of my current projects from my company (FinTech domain).

Experience

• I explained the system architecture, components, and design decisions of my project
• The interviewer asked many cross-questions like:
  • Why did you use this?
  • Why not use that?
  • What if you had done it differently?
• Many of the questions were framed from the interviewer’s own tech stack and assumptions. (In my opinion)

From my perspective, it felt like he was more focused on comparing my implementation with how he would have designed it, rather than understanding the constraints, scale, and context under which my project was built.

Later, the round moved to behavioral and situational questions, such as:

• Handling disagreements in a team and PM.
• Decision-making under ambiguity
• Dealing with production issues
• Collaboration with stakeholders

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Post Interview: Debrief & Ghosting

After the Hiring Manager round, the next day, I received a call from the consultant HR (Careernet) informing me that:

“You are in the debrief round.”

After that call:

• I did not receive any further updates
• No rejection email
• No confirmation
• No feedback

I tried calling and following up multiple times, but there was no response. Eventually, I realized I was ghosted.

This part was honestly disappointing, especially after investing time across three solid rounds.