Kotak Mahindra Bank SDE 2 Backend Interview Experience (3 Rounds)

Experience Level: ~3 years
Role: SDE 2 – Backend
Mode: Referral
Result: ❌ Rejected

Initial HR Call

Discussion points:

• Overall experience
• Current tech stack
• Backend exposure
• Current & expected compensation
• Notice period

HR was clear and supportive throughout the process.

Round 1 – Bar Raiser (90 mins)

This was a mixed round (DSA + LLD + Distributed Systems).

• DSA: Problem based on Kadane’s Algorithm
• LLD: Design an E-commerce platform (classes, DB choice, flows)
• Distributed Systems: Event-driven processing, DB selection, scalability

Focus was on clarity, reasoning, and trade-offs.

Round 2 – DSA

• Number of Islands
• One LeetCode Hard problem

Clean code + complexity discussion expected.

Round 3 – LLD + Experience

Problem: Design an Airport Scheduler (single runway).
Covered priority queue design, priority handling, race conditions, starvation, and concurrency.

This round was rescheduled 3 times.
Interviewer seemed to expect a very specific approach.

Final Thoughts

Honestly, I was expecting a positive result after the final round, so the rejection was disappointing. I had invested a lot of preparation and effort into the process.

That said, the interviews were challenging and helped me identify gaps in my LLD and concurrency concepts. The HR team was supportive and professional throughout, which I genuinely appreciated.