Morgan Stanley | Bangalore | Senior Associate | Mid April 2022 | India

I went through an interview process with Morgan Stanley for a Software Engineer role in Bangalore. My professional background spans approximately 3 years, comprising 1.5 years at a product-based startup and 1.4 years at a service-based MNC.

The entire process was structured into four distinct rounds.

Round 1: Online Assessment

This round consisted of 10 Multiple Choice Questions and 2 coding problems which were comparable to LeetCode Medium difficulty.

Round 2: Technical Interview I

This interview focused on both Data Structures and Java. For DS, I was asked to:

• Find a loop in a Linked List, with a follow-up to remove it.
• Check if a Linked List is a palindrome.

The Java questions were quite extensive, covering:

• Explanation and code implementation of the Singleton design pattern.
• Detailed discussion of OOPS concepts with examples.
• The differences between String and StringBuffer.
• The internal working mechanism of HashMap.
• SQL queries, specifically for finding the 3rd highest salary and general join-related questions.
• When to choose NoSQL databases over SQL databases.

Round 3: Technical Interview II

This round also heavily focused on Data Structures and Java, with a strong emphasis on optimization and exploring multiple approaches for each problem. The DS questions included:

• Finding the starting point of a loop in a Linked List.
• Identifying the first non-repeating character in a string.
• Sorting an array after squaring its elements.
• Finding the longest common prefix of an array of strings.

Java questions in this round covered:

• The internal working of both HashMap and HashSet.
• Strategies for handling a large number of incoming requests in a system.
• Discussion on different memory areas within the JVM.

Hiring Manager Round

This final round involved broader discussions around my experience and technical decisions:

• A brief discussion on my projects.
• Justification for using particular technologies in my projects.
• How I implemented fallback mechanisms in my systems.

I was also asked some general behavioral questions during this round.