GreyOrange SDE3 Interview Experience (Rejected in System Design Round)
Summary
I recently interviewed for a GreyOrange SDE3 position, cleared the coding round but was rejected in the system design round.
Full Experience
Recently appeared for GreyOrange SDE3 interviews. Sharing questions for others preparing for backend/system design roles.
Coding Round Questions:
- Design a backend data model for a social media platform supporting comments and comment likes at scale.
Requirements:
- Fast comment retrieval
- Efficient like tracking
- No duplicate likes
- Handle large scale traffic/data
- String parsing/compression problem
Examples:
a1b2c3
a11b2 -> 13
(Parse/decode/compress string with character-frequency handling and multi-digit counts.)
- Sliding Window Problem
Given a string and a keyword, find the shortest substring containing all characters of the keyword.
Example:
Input: ADOBECODEBANC ABC
Output: BANC
Length = 4
- Design a data structure supporting:
- Insert(value)
- Delete(value)
- GetRandom()
All operations should work in O(1).
- Production Deployment Scenario
During a critical production deployment, an issue occurs after release.
Explain:
- How you communicate the issue
- Business impact
- Mitigation plan
- Next steps
System Design Round:
- Design an automated circular parking lot system Requirements:
-
Multiple entry gates
-
RC scan at entry
-
Circular parking lot
-
Parking + exit operations
-
Billing:
- ₹100 for first hour
- ₹40/hour afterwards
-
Each level can support only 3 concurrent operations
-
Concurrency handling discussion
- Design warehouse robot/task orchestration system Topics discussed:
- Task allocation
- Robot coordination
- Real-time updates
- Failure handling
- Queue/message broker usage
- Scalability
Could not clear the system design round, but overall discussion was interesting and focused heavily on concurrency, scalability, and real-world backend design.
Interview Questions (7)
Backend data model for social media comments and likes
Design a backend data model for a social media platform supporting comments and comment likes at scale. Requirements: Fast comment retrieval, Efficient like tracking, No duplicate likes, Handle large scale traffic/data.
String parsing and compression problem
Given a string with character-frequency encoding, parse, decode, and compress it handling multi-digit counts. Example: a1b2c3 (original) and a11b2 -> 13 (compressed).
Shortest substring containing all characters of a keyword
Given a string and a keyword, find the shortest substring containing all characters of the keyword. Example: Input string ADOBECODEBANC, keyword ABC, output BANC with length 4.
O(1) Insert Delete GetRandom data structure
Design a data structure that supports Insert(value), Delete(value), and GetRandom() operations, all in O(1) time complexity.
Production deployment issue handling
During a critical production deployment, an issue occurs after release. Explain how you communicate the issue, its business impact, mitigation plan, and next steps.
Automated circular parking lot system design
Design an automated circular parking lot system with multiple entry gates, RC scan at entry, parking and exit operations, billing (₹100 for first hour, ₹40/hour thereafter), each level supporting only 3 concurrent operations, and discuss concurrency handling.
Warehouse robot/task orchestration system design
Design a warehouse robot/task orchestration system covering task allocation, robot coordination, real-time updates, failure handling, queue/message broker usage, and scalability considerations.