Okta: Senior Software Engineer Interview Experience | 4.8 YOE
Summary
I interviewed for a Senior Software Engineer (Node.js) role at Okta, completed coding, system design, and hiring manager rounds, and was selected.
Full Experience
I recently interviewed for the Senior Software Engineer (Node.js) role at Okta and wanted to share my experience. Hopefully this gives others an idea of what to expect while preparing.
Current Org
Tier-2 Product MNC
Applied via
Naukri.com
Timeline
The entire process took around 16–17 days from application to receiving the final decision.
Round 1 – Coding (DSA)
The round consisted of two coding problems:
- Product of Array Except Self
- Course Schedule I
Round 2 – System Design
This round had two parts.
Part 1 – Project Deep Dive
I was asked to discuss a challenging engineering problem from one of my previous projects. The conversation focused on:
- The problem and its impact
- My approach to solving it
- Alternative solutions considered
- Design decisions and trade-offs
- Scalability and reliability
This wasn't about recalling facts—it was about explaining the reasoning behind the decisions I made.
Part 2 – Backend Service Design
The second part involved designing a backend service from scratch. The discussion covered areas such as:
- High-level architecture
- API design
- Database schema
- Asynchronous processing
- Retry strategies
- Concurrency and failure handling
Towards the end, I was asked to write some basic pseudocode to explain the core workflow.
Round 3 – Hiring Manager
This was primarily a discussion around:
- My previous experience
- Technical decisions from past projects
- Behavioural and situational questions
- Career goals and future plans
- Why I was interested in joining Okta
The conversation felt conversational and focused on understanding how I think and work rather than asking obscure technical questions.
Verdict
🎉 Selected✅
#okta
Interview Questions (2)
Product of Array Except Self
Given an integer array nums, return an array answer such that answer[i] is equal to the product of all the elements of nums except nums[i]. The solution must run in O(n) time and without using division.
Course Schedule I
There are a total of numCourses courses you have to take, labeled from 0 to numCourses-1. Some courses may have prerequisites, given as pairs [a, b] where you must take course b before course a. Determine if it is possible to finish all courses.