Ebay Senior Software Engineer Interview Experience

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ebay
Senior Software Engineer
July 24, 202512 reads

Summary

I interviewed for a Senior Software Engineer role at Ebay, which involved multiple technical and system design rounds. I was downleveled to a mid-level position and did not accept the offer due to salary expectations.

Full Experience

Screening Round

  1. A simple weighted grouping question. Given groups corresponding to each weight: For eg: 100-200 -> Light weight 200 - 300 -> mid weight 400 - 500 -> heavy weight tell the frequency in each group and return min and max. Key here was, do it as system design, make all classes etc.

  2. Buy and Sell stock unlimited number of times

On-site one

  1. Top k frequent elements
  2. Sudoku Solver
  3. Merge Intervals You are expected to do only 2..I did 3 because I was quick to solve the first two

On-site two

  1. Standard behavioural questions

On-site three

  1. Implement ls-r given directory structure as dictionary, return all files within one directory and subdirectories. You can do a simple sort and binary search but I made the mistake of doing it with tries. They are more interested in overall development and want unit tests etc also, not just the best most optimised algo, although I would argue in this case, trie is no entirely better than binary search

On-site four

System design round, was asked to implement an online flash sale It got really deep, where I was expected to write even deep level api calls, handle mutex, optimisitic locking, pessimistic locking etc

Verdict: Downlevelled from senior to mid, did not meet salary expectations so did not take the offer.

Interview Questions (7)

Q1
Weighted Grouping with Frequency and Min/Max
Data Structures & Algorithms

Given items that fall into predefined weight ranges (e.g., 100-200 for Light weight, 200-300 for mid weight, 400-500 for heavy weight), determine the frequency of items in each group and return the minimum and maximum values within each group. The interviewer emphasized a system design approach, suggesting the implementation of classes.

Q2
Best Time to Buy and Sell Stock with Unlimited Transactions
Data Structures & AlgorithmsMedium

You are given an array prices where prices[i] is the price of a given stock on the ith day. Design an algorithm to find the maximum profit. You may complete as many transactions as you like (i.e., buy one and sell one share of the stock multiple times). You may not simultaneously buy multiple shares of stock (i.e., you must sell the stock before you buy again).

Q3
Top K Frequent Elements
Data Structures & AlgorithmsMedium

Given an integer array nums and an integer k, return the k most frequent elements. You may return the answer in any order.

Q4
Sudoku Solver
Data Structures & AlgorithmsHard

Write a program to solve a Sudoku puzzle by filling the empty cells. A sudoku solution must satisfy all of the following rules: 1. Each of the digits 1-9 must appear exactly once in each row. 2. Each of the digits 1-9 must appear exactly once in each column. 3. Each of the digits 1-9 must appear exactly once in each of the 9 3x3 sub-boxes of the grid. The '.' character indicates empty cells.

Q5
Merge Intervals
Data Structures & AlgorithmsMedium

Given an array of intervals where intervals[i] = [start_i, end_i], merge all overlapping intervals, and return an array of the non-overlapping intervals that cover all the intervals in the input.

Q6
Implement ls -r (Recursive Directory Listing)
Data Structures & Algorithms

Implement the functionality of ls -r. Given a directory structure represented as a dictionary (or similar data structure), return all files within the specified directory and its subdirectories recursively.

Q7
Design an Online Flash Sale System
System DesignHard

Design an online flash sale system. The design should cover deep-level API calls, and incorporate mechanisms for handling concurrency, such as mutexes, optimistic locking, and pessimistic locking.

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