Flipkart SDE 2 Interview Experience

Round 1a - Machine Coding (90 mins) - Jan 3rd Week:

• Around 60 candidates joined a Google Meet.
• They shared a Google Docs link containing the problem statement.
• 30 minutes of problem explanation by a Flipkart SDE.
• 90 minutes to complete the LLD (no language restriction) in your code editor (like VS Code). Zip it and submit it in the Google Form shared by them.
• Problem Statement: Distributed Task Scheduler with Dynamic Load Management
• Try to implement all the test cases, including the bonus ones. They prioritize correct running code over neat code with OOP, SOLID principles, and design patterns (sharing this from my experience last year).
• I implemented all the given test cases except two bonus ones.

Round 2 - Online Assessment (75 mins) - Jan 3rd Week:

• They shared a HackerEarth OA link with everyone who attended the Machine Coding round and asked us to complete it by the next day.
• The OA was for 70 marks, and they mentioned during the MC round that 50 marks was the cutoff.
• One DP question (20 marks, Medium) and one Graph question (50 marks, Medium-Hard).
• I solved only the 50-mark question due to an issue in the boilerplate code of the 20-mark question.

Round 1b - Machine Coding Evaluation (45 mins) - Feb 1st Week:

• Evaluation of the submitted code from Round 1a.
• The interviewer asked me to explain the problem statement and the code I wrote.
• After explaining the problem statement, I walked through most of my code by running each test case.
• The interviewer mentioned some missing validations, although they were not specified in the problem statement. He also asked what could be improved in certain methods. For example, instead of sorting tasks, we could use a priority queue, and he asked about its time complexity.
• At the end, the interviewer stopped me and said the implementation looked correct. He then asked a concurrency question: what if two tasks arrive at the same time? He seemed satisfied with my answer.

Feedback from HR: Positive – Scheduled my next Design Round.

Round 3 - Design Round (60 mins) - Feb 2nd Week:

• The interviewer shared a Google Docs link containing the question and expectations for the round.
• Question: Design Airline Ticket Management System
• The expectation was to write entities, schema, APIs, and service implementations (LLD).
• For the first 40 minutes, I wrote entities, schema, and APIs while discussing with the interviewer. He asked clarifying questions in between, and I explained accordingly, making corrections where needed. This part went very well.
• In the last 20 minutes, I moved on to service implementations, but I was not very clear about what exactly to write in the document. Initially, I started writing classes (since LLD was mentioned after APIs) to explain my flight search implementation. After that, he asked how the booking service works.
• I explained things at a high level, and he seemed okay with my explanation. Then he asked me to document those details. So I wrote them line by line.
• At the end, he said whatever I explained was correct, but I needed to put everything in the document. He seemed satisfied with my design, and I was expecting positive feedback.

Feedback from HR: Positive – Scheduled my next HM Round.

Round 4 - Problem Solving & Hiring Manager Round (60 mins) - Feb 3rd Week:

• After introductions, the HM asked about my role in my project and asked a few related questions.
• Then he asked me to explain/design my current project architecture. I opened Excalidraw and explained the important services and how they work.
• He asked multiple technical questions while I was explaining my project, including scenario-based questions like how pods scale up, how high traffic is distributed across multiple instances, etc.
• After 30 minutes of deep discussion, the HM asked a few behavioral questions for about 5 minutes, such as why I am leaving my current company and what I would do if a production issue occurs.
• The HM seemed satisfied with my answers. At the end, I asked him a few questions as well. I am expecting positive feedback for this round too.

Feedback from HR: Waiting (I will update the post once I receive it).