Graviton Research Capital | Interview Experience | SDE-1

Continuing my interview experience series, this one is from Graviton Research Capital.

Company: Graviton Research Capital Interview Date: October 2025 Role: SDE-1

I applied through a referral.

For a long time, Graviton was one of the companies I genuinely wanted to work for. Being a high-frequency trading (HFT) firm known for its strong engineering culture.

Initial Screening Round - Recruiter Discussion

We discussed:

• Why I wanted to join Graviton
• My background and experience
• What to expect from the interview process

The recruiter was very transparent about the process and explained that every round was a knockout round. He also mentioned that the interviews would be challenging.

Round 1 - Problem Solving with JavaScript

The interviewer gave me two problems and was less interested in the final answer than in how I approached the solution. What I enjoyed most was that we discussed multiple approaches for the same problem:

• Brute force solutions
• Optimized approaches
• Trade-offs between different implementations

Result - Passed

Round 2 - Problem Solving with Team Lead

The interviewer then presented three problems that needed to be solved with optimal approaches. Unlike many frontend interviews, this round was heavily focused on mathematical reasoning and analytical problem-solving.

The interviewer paid close attention to:

• Thought process
• Optimization
• Edge cases

I was able to complete all the questions successfully.

Result - Passed

Round 3 - Onsite Round (Panel of Two Interviewers)

This was the most important round of the process. The panel asked me to implement a VS Code-style file and folder explorer from scratch.

The task involved:

• Recursive rendering
• Tree structures
• Folder expansion and collapse
• State management
• File hierarchy operations

Unfortunately, this is where things became difficult.

From the moment the round started, I was extremely nervous. Graviton was one of my dream companies, and I put a lot of pressure on myself to perform well.

As the implementation progressed:

• I started fumbling on concepts I already knew
• I overthought simple decisions
• At one point, I even forgot how I wanted to structure the recursive implementation

Result - No Hire

Final Result: No Hire

A few days later, the recruiter reached out with feedback. The recruiter mentioned that the panel was still interested in my profile and suggested that I take some time, continue improving, and consider interviewing again in the future.

Key Learning

I had cleared multiple difficult rounds and demonstrated my capabilities, but when it mattered most, nervousness affected my performance.

Since then, I have realized that interview preparation is not only about technical skills; it is also about learning how to stay calm under pressure.