Kotak | SDE2 | BLR
Summary
I interviewed for an SDE2 role at Kotak in Bengaluru, facing challenges with a DSA problem which likely led to a rejection.
Full Experience
I recently had my interview for the SDE2 position at Kotak in Bengaluru. The first round, which was also a bar raiser, involved a mix of Data Structures and Algorithms and System Design questions. I was asked to solve the 'Word Ladder' problem from LeetCode and design a 'Parking Lot System'. There was also a mention of a distributed system question, but it wasn't very specific. Unfortunately, I struggled with the DSA question and couldn't come up with an optimized solution. Based on my performance, I believe a rejection is highly likely.
Interview Questions (2)
Given two words, beginWord and endWord, and a dictionary wordList, return the number of words in the shortest transformation sequence from beginWord to endWord, such that: 1. Only one letter can be changed at each step. 2. Each transformed word must exist in wordList. Return 0 if there is no such transformation sequence. All words have the same length and contain only lowercase letters.
Design a parking lot system that supports multiple levels, different vehicle types (e.g., motorcycles, cars, buses), and various parking spot sizes. The system should be able to park and unpark vehicles, find available spots efficiently, and generate parking tickets with appropriate charges.