Meta E5 Phone Screen + Full Loop | Passed
- Location
- London, UK
- Experience
- 10 years
- Posted
- 20 May 2025
Summary
I successfully passed my E5 Production Engineer interview loop at Meta in London, UK, after a fast interview process and a total of three weeks of preparation.
How it went
Giving back to the community.
Phone Screen
Round #1 - Coding
- a) Easy-to-medium problem involving string manipulations. Not on LeetCode.
- b) A version of 489. Robot Room Cleaner with slightly relaxed constraints.
Round #2 - Troubleshooting
A typical troubleshooting round that tests my debugging skills in Linux-like environments.
Full Loop
Round #1 - Coding
- a) A classical one. 125. Valid Palindrome.
- b) A problem involving reading 2 CSV files, doing some calculations, and printing the combined output. Very similar to a classical problem involving dinosaurs. Not on LeetCode.
Round #2 - Systems Design
Design a CI/CD pipeline to upgrade the kernel version on a set of thousands of machines distributed across several data centers.
Round #3 - Behavioral
Standard behavioral questions with a twist at the end. For example: Tell me about a time you convinced someone to change their mind, and later you found you were wrong.
Round #4 - Operating Systems
Standard OS questions around memory management, processes and thread management, and VFS. 2nd part of the round was dedicated to troubleshooting questions.
Questions asked (6)
- 01
Robot Room Cleaner (Modified)
Data Structures & Algorithms
Open the problemA version of 489. Robot Room Cleaner with slightly relaxed constraints.
- 02
- 03
CSV File Processing and Aggregation (Dinosaur Problem Variant)
Data Structures & Algorithms
A problem involving reading 2 CSV files, doing some calculations, and printing the combined output. Very similar to a classical problem involving dinosaurs. Not on LeetCode.
- 04
Design a CI/CD Pipeline for Kernel Upgrades
System Design
Design a CI/CD pipeline to upgrade the kernel version on a set of thousands of machines distributed across several data centers.
- 05
Tell me about a time you convinced someone to change their mind, and later you found you were wrong.
Behavioral
Standard behavioral question: Tell me about a time you convinced someone to change their mind, and later you found you were wrong.
- 06
Operating Systems: Memory, Processes, Threads, VFS
Other
Standard OS questions around memory management, processes and thread management, and VFS.
How they prepared
I only had a week of preparation before my Phone Screen and 2 weeks before the virtual on-site. The process was pretty fast - it took less than a week from the final round to the offer.