LinkedIn | Senior Software Engineer | Bangalore | Offer

Sharing my experience since reading previous interview experiences on LeetCode was extremely helpful while I was preparing.

Round 1 : Phone Screen The interview started with a few questions about my resume and previous projects.

The interviewer then asked: “If you had to implement a simple rate limiter, how would you do it?”

There was also a 2D matrix coding question. Unfortunately, I don’t remember the exact problem. ⸻ Round 2 : Host Manager / Hiring Manager

This was a standard hiring manager round, with discussions around:

• Projects I’ve worked on
• My role and ownership in those projects
• Technical decisions I’ve made
• Behavioral questions
• Situational/leadership questions ⸻ Round 3 : Coding & Algorithms

The interview was conducted on CoderPad. The main problem was: Max Consecutive Ones III

I suggested a sliding-window approach and was able to complete the solution.

The interviewer then introduced a variation: what if the array had a circular/loop structure? We discussed how the approach would need to be adapted.

There was still around half an hour remaining, so the interviewer gave me a bonus problem that was a variant of Course Schedule II.

I proposed Kahn’s algorithm and explained the solution. We ran out of time before I could complete the implementation, so I was asked to write the pseudocode instead. ⸻ Round 4 : Coding with AI

This was also conducted on CoderPad. Boilerplate code and test cases were provided, along with an AI-assist tab.

The problem involved an adjacency list representing friendships between users. It had 3 parts:

• Part 1: Find the shortest path between two users, returning the sequence of users traversed from user A to user B.
• Part 2: Find the shortest distance between the users. I reused the BFS logic from Part 1 and modified it to return the distance.
• Part 3: Suggest friends based on mutual connections between users.

I was able to complete all the parts and run the test cases successfully.

The interviewer was particularly interested in:

• Code reusability
• How I structured the solution as the requirements evolved
• How effectively I used AI
• Whether I was checking the edge cases and validating the generated code rather than blindly accepting it ⸻ Round 5 : Software Design & Architecture

The problem was:

People regularly share articles on LinkedIn. Design a system to maintain a Top-N leaderboard of the most-shared articles over rolling windows of 5 minutes, 1 hour, and 24 hours. ⸻ After the final design round, I was told that my overall interview feedback was positive. However, the team I had originally interviewed for had already filled its opening. The recruiter then spoke with another hiring manager who had an open position on his team and scheduled another hiring manager round the same day.

This was primarily a behavioral and team-fit discussion around my experience, the kind of work I enjoy, my projects, and whether my background would be a good fit for his team.

I was selected for the role the same day.