HyperVerge SDE Intern Interview Experience | JIIT Noida
Summary
I went through a multi-round interview process at HyperVerge for an SDE Intern role, covering system design, DSA, JavaScript/Node.js, puzzles and HR, and I received an offer.
Full Experience
HyperVerge SDE Intern Interview Experience | JIIT Noida
Company: HyperVerge
Role: SDE Intern
College: Jaypee Institute of Information Technology (JIIT), Noida
Mode: On-Campus Placement
Status: Selected
Overall Difficulty: Moderate to Hard
Introduction
I appeared for the HyperVerge SDE Intern role through the on-campus placement process at JIIT Noida.
The process consisted of:
- Written Design Test
- Technical Interview 1
- Technical Interview 2
- Puzzle Round
- HR Round
The interviews were highly discussion-oriented. The technical rounds focused heavily on my written design, projects, technologies mentioned on my resume, scalability, performance, and core CS concepts.
Note: The questions below are not the exact questions asked in the interviews. They are reconstructed from what I could remember and grouped by topic for clarity. The wording may differ from the actual questions, but they should give you an idea of the type, depth, and overall flow of the interview process.
Interview Process
| Round | Duration | Focus |
|---|---|---|
| Resume Shortlisting | - | Resume |
| Written Test | ~30 min | System Design |
| Technical Interview 1 | ~45-50 min | Design, Database, Scalability |
| Technical Interview 2 | ~45-50 min | Projects, CS Fundamentals, DSA |
| Puzzle Round | ~25-30 min | Logical Reasoning |
| HR Round | ~1.5 hours | Personal & Behavioral |
Round 1: Written Design Test
Duration: ~30 minutes
Mode: Pen and Paper
The first round after resume shortlisting was a Reminder Scheduler system-design problem.
The system had to allow users to create reminders for a specific date and time and send a notification at the scheduled time.
Given Constraints
- 10 million active reminders
- Reminders distributed across future dates and times
- Highly uneven distribution
- Around 200,000 reminders could become due in the same second
- Reminder-processing code running on 10 machines
- All machines reading from the same database
- Early delivery was unacceptable
- A few seconds of delay was acceptable, but minutes of delay were considered a failure
The test asked us to cover the following areas.
Database Design
Design the tables, columns, primary keys, indexes, and purpose of each table.
My design included tables for users, notifications/reminders, and pending notifications.
API Design
Design APIs for:
- Creating a reminder
- Cancelling a reminder
- Sending the notification internally
The request, response, and failure cases had to be specified.
Hard Case
The key scenario was:
200,000 reminders become due in the same second while 10 machines are processing reminders simultaneously.
The questions were:
- How would you find due reminders without scanning 10 million rows?
- How would you divide the work?
- How would you prevent multiple machines from processing the same reminder?
- How would you ensure each reminder is sent only once?
Scalability
We also had to explain what would break first and how we would scale the system as the number of users and reminders increased.
Round 2: Technical Interview 1
Duration: ~45-50 minutes
Focus: Written Design, Database, Scalability & Performance
This round was a detailed discussion of the Reminder Scheduler design from the written test.
Database Questions
Questions included:
- Why did you create these tables?
- Why is each table required?
- Why did you choose these attributes?
- What should be the primary key?
- Which fields should be indexed and why?
- What queries would use those indexes?
- Are your tables normalized?
- What normal form does the design follow?
- Is there redundant data?
- Would you keep pending notifications separately?
- How would you maintain notification status?
- How would you identify pending or failed notifications?
- How would retry information be stored?
Normalization
The discussion also covered:
- Why normalize the tables?
- What problems does data redundancy create?
- What happens if everything is stored in one table?
- When would denormalization make sense?
- What are the read/write trade-offs?
Scalability & Concurrency
The interviewer repeatedly increased the scale and asked:
- What happens when reminders increase beyond 10 million?
- What becomes the first bottleneck?
- How would you scale application servers?
- What happens when all 10 machines query the database together?
- How would you avoid a full-table scan?
- How would you handle 200,000 reminders becoming due together?
- How would you divide the workload among workers?
- How would you prevent duplicate processing?
- What happens if a worker crashes during processing?
- What happens if database state is updated but notification sending fails?
- How would retries work?
Pagination & Batch Processing
Pagination also became part of the discussion:
- How would you avoid loading millions of notifications at once?
- How would you process records in batches?
- How would pagination behave when multiple servers process the same table?
- Can two servers fetch the same records?
- How would you prevent duplicate processing?
- Would page-number pagination be suitable?
- What alternative pagination strategy could be used?
The central scenario throughout the round remained:
10 machines + 10 million reminders + 200,000 reminders due simultaneously.
Round 3: Technical Interview 2
Duration: ~45-50 minutes
Focus: Projects, Resume, CS Fundamentals, JavaScript, Node.js & DSA
The second technical round shifted primarily toward my projects and technical skills mentioned on my resume.
Project Discussion
A significant portion was around my AI-based project.
Questions included:
- Explain the project architecture.
- Why did you choose these technologies?
- Why this particular model?
- How does the AI pipeline work?
- How does the frontend communicate with the backend?
- How is data stored?
- How does retrieval work?
- How does authentication work?
- How do you handle failures?
- What happens when users increase?
- How would you scale the project?
- What could become a performance bottleneck?
- Why did you choose this database?
- What alternatives did you consider?
JWT & Authentication
Questions included:
- What is JWT?
- How does JWT authentication work?
- How is a JWT generated?
- What information does it contain?
- How does the server verify it?
- Where would you store the JWT?
- How would you protect an API endpoint?
- Authentication vs authorization?
- What happens when a JWT expires?
- What happens if a JWT is stolen?
Password Storage
Questions included:
- How would you store passwords in a database?
- Hashing or encryption?
- What is hashing?
- What is encryption?
- What is decryption?
- Hashing vs encryption?
- Is hashing reversible?
- Is encryption reversible?
- Why shouldn't passwords be stored in plain text?
- How would you verify a password during login?
- What is a salt and why is it used?
JavaScript & Node.js
Promises
Questions included:
- What is a Promise?
- What are its different states?
- How does asynchronous execution work?
- Sequential vs concurrent Promise execution?
- If two Promises each take 10 seconds and start together, how long does the overall operation take?
- What happens if they execute sequentially?
- What is
Promise.all()? - What happens if one Promise rejects?
JavaScript Execution Model
Questions included:
- Is JavaScript single-threaded or multi-threaded?
- If JavaScript is single-threaded, how can asynchronous operations run concurrently?
- What is the event loop?
- What is the call stack?
- What is the task queue?
- How does asynchronous I/O work?
- Does asynchronous execution mean JavaScript becomes multi-threaded?
Node.js
Questions included:
- What is Node.js?
- Why is it used for backend development?
- How does Node.js handle multiple requests?
- How does asynchronous I/O work?
- What is the Node.js event loop?
- How does Node.js handle concurrent requests?
DSA Question
Missing Number
Given an array containing numbers from 1 to N with one number missing, find the missing number.
Questions included:
- How would you solve it?
- Time complexity?
- Space complexity?
- Can it be solved without extra space?
- What alternative approaches can be used?
Round 4: Puzzle Round
Duration: ~25-30 minutes
After the second technical interview, there was a separate puzzle round before HR.
I was asked two puzzles.
1. Bridge Crossing Puzzle
The standard Bridge Crossing puzzle, involving people with different crossing times and constraints.
The discussion involved:
- Finding a valid strategy
- Comparing strategies
- Minimizing total crossing time
- Reasoning about the order of crossings
2. 25 Horses Puzzle
The classic 25 Horses problem.
The discussion involved:
- Dividing horses into groups
- Conducting races
- Eliminating horses that could no longer be among the fastest
- Identifying the remaining candidates
- Finding the minimum number of races
Round 5: HR Interview
Duration: ~1.5 hours
The HR round was the longest and most personal round.
It was an in-depth discussion about who I am as a person, my journey, achievements, strengths, weaknesses, and what I could bring to the company.
The interviewer went through different stages of my life.
School Life
Questions included:
- How were you academically until Class 10?
- How were you socially?
- What were your interests?
- What were your strengths and weaknesses?
- What achievements are you proud of?
- What would your friends say about you?
- What would your friends say you need to improve?
Classes 11 & 12
Questions covered:
- How did you change after Class 10?
- What challenges did you face?
- What did you improve?
- What were your strengths and weaknesses?
- What were your achievements?
- How did your friends perceive you?
College Life
The conversation then moved through my college journey:
- How was your first year?
- How was your second year?
- How were your friendships?
- What were your achievements?
- What were your biggest challenges?
- What are your strengths and weaknesses?
- What have you improved since joining college?
- What would your friends appreciate about you?
- What would your friends say you need to improve?
Similar questions were asked across different phases of my life to understand how I had changed over time.
For example:
- What are 2-3 things your friends would appreciate about you?
- What are 2-3 things your friends would say you need to improve?
Joining the Company
Towards the end, the discussion moved toward the role and my future at the company:
- Why do you want to join HyperVerge?
- What skills will you bring to the company?
- What can you contribute as an intern?
- What would you bring to the team?
- What are you looking to learn?
- What do you expect from the company?
- What are your career goals?
- Why do you want this role?
- Where do you see yourself in the next 3 years?
- Where do you see yourself in the next 5 years?
I also asked a few questions about the company and the role.
Final Result
After completing all the rounds, I received the SDE Intern offer from HyperVerge through the JIIT Noida on-campus placement process.
The complete process was:
Resume Shortlisting → Written Design Test → Technical Interview 1 → Technical Interview 2 → Puzzle Round → HR Interview → Offer
Overall, the process covered system design, databases, normalization, scalability, concurrency, projects, JWT, password security, JavaScript, Node.js, DSA, logical puzzles, and an in-depth HR discussion about my personal journey.
Interview Questions (4)
Reminder Scheduler System Design
Design a reminder scheduler that can handle 10 million active reminders, with up to 200,000 reminders becoming due in the same second. The system runs on 10 machines that read from a shared database. Early delivery is unacceptable; a few seconds of delay is acceptable, but minutes of delay is a failure. Provide database schema, API designs (create, cancel, send notification), and explain how to find due reminders without scanning all rows, how to divide work among machines, prevent duplicate processing, and ensure each reminder is sent only once.
Missing Number
Given an array containing numbers from 1 to N with exactly one number missing, find the missing number. Discuss the algorithm, its time and space complexity, and whether it can be solved without extra space.
Bridge Crossing Puzzle
Classic bridge crossing puzzle: a group of people with different crossing times must cross a bridge at night with a single lantern. At most two can cross at a time, and they move at the slower person's speed. Find a strategy that minimizes the total crossing time.
25 Horses Puzzle
Classic 25 horses problem: you have 25 horses and a track that can race only 5 horses at a time. Determine the minimum number of races required to find the three fastest horses overall.