GroupOn | SDE 3 | Bengaluru | Offer

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SDE 3bengaluruOffer
November 22, 202115 reads

Summary

I interviewed for an SDE 3 role at Groupon in Bengaluru and received an offer for SDE 2 due to my current tech stack. The interview process included an online assessment, two coding rounds, a system design round, and a hiring manager round.

Full Experience

I recently interviewed for an SDE 3 position at Groupon in Bengaluru. The interview process spanned four rounds.

The first round was a Hackerrank Online Assessment where I tackled two problems. For 'Count Ways to Sum using 1-N numbers', I managed to solve 6 out of 13 test cases. The second problem, 'Count Number of incorrect product prices', I solved completely, passing all test cases.

The second round was a coding interview. The first question was the classic 3Sum problem. I struggled a bit but was able to solve it after receiving a hint from the interviewer. The second question was Best Time to Buy and Sell Stock II, which I solved optimally, and I felt it went very well.

Round three was focused on System Design and Architecture. The main problem was to design a system for sending notifications, specifically a Notification System as a Software as a Service. During the discussion, I explained concepts like Rate Limiting, specifically the Token Bucket algorithm, Horizontal Scaling strategies, and how to send messages to offline users. I believe this round went quite well.

Finally, the fourth round was with the Hiring Manager. This round involved some behavioral questions. Technical discussions included Java concurrency concepts like Synchronized, Atomic Variables, and Volatile keywords, where I wasn't able to explain Atomic Variables and Volatile in detail. We also discussed Least Recently Used (LRU) and Least Frequently Used (LFU) Caches, which I felt I handled well.

After completing all rounds, I received an offer. Although I applied for an SDE 3 role, they offered me an SDE 2 position, citing that my current tech stack might not be industry-standard based.

Interview Questions (7)

Q1
Count Ways to Sum using 1-N numbers
Data Structures & Algorithms

This problem asks to count the number of ways to sum using numbers from 1 to N.

Q2
Count Number of incorrect product prices
Data Structures & Algorithms

The problem involved counting the number of incorrect product prices.

Q3
3Sum
Data Structures & Algorithms

Given an integer array nums, return all the triplets [nums[i], nums[j], nums[k]] such that i != j, i != k, and j != k, and nums[i] + nums[j] + nums[k] == 0. Notice that the solution set must not contain duplicate triplets.

Q4
Best Time to Buy and Sell Stock II
Data Structures & Algorithms

You are given an integer array prices where prices[i] is the price of a given stock on the ith day. On each day, you may decide to buy and/or sell the stock. You can only hold at most one share of the stock at any time. However, you can buy it then immediately sell it on the same day. Find the maximum profit you can achieve.

Q5
Design a Notification System (SaaS)
System Design

Design a scalable system for sending notifications, structured as a Software as a Service. I discussed aspects like Rate Limiting, Horizontal Scaling, and strategies for sending messages to offline users.

Q6
Concurrency Primitives in Java
Other

Discussion on Java concurrency primitives: Synchronized keyword, Atomic Variables, and Volatile keyword.

Q7
LRU and LFU Caches
Data Structures & Algorithms

Discussion on Least Recently Used (LRU) and Least Frequently Used (LFU) caching mechanisms.

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