OCI | SMTS | Interview experience | Oracle
Summary
I interviewed for a Senior Member of Technical Staff (SMTS) role at Oracle (OCI). The process involved a screening round, followed by four back-to-back loops covering problem-solving, system design, and a hiring manager discussion. Unfortunately, I was rejected for failing to provide a working solution for one of the Round 1 problems.
Full Experience
YOE: 5
Applied on job portal and recruiter reached out to me.
Screening round:
- Discussion on the current project (40 mins)
- Problem solving : https://leetcode.com/problems/avoid-flood-in-the-city/description/ (30 mins)
4 Loops interviews were scheduled back to back after 2-3 days
Round 1: Problem solving
1. Remove Binary trees leaves step by step from left to right until the whole tree becomes empty
- 
Input: root = [1,2,3,4,5]
Output: [[4,5,3],[2],[1]]
2. https://leetcode.com/problems/remove-k-digits/description/
Round 2: Design a chat application similar to whatsapp/slack (1 hr)
- 1B users, 10M DAU
- Discussion on API Design, DB choices, guaranteed message delivery
Round 3: Hiring manager (45 mins)
- Deep dive into the current project, work experience and some follow-ups.
- Behavioural questions
1. Most critical bug
2. What have done to increase the productiivity of the team
Round 4: Problem solving and distributed systems (1hr 15 mins)
1. Some question on binary search similar to: https://leetcode.com/problems/koko-eating-bananas/description/
2. Question on stack similar to finding the next greater element
- Distributes system questions.
- SQL vs NoSQL
- DB indexing
- Scalability at each layer
Update:
Verdict: Rejected as I was unable to provide the working solution for 1st problem in round 1
Interview Questions (11)
Problem solving : https://leetcode.com/problems/avoid-flood-in-the-city/description/ (30 mins)
Remove Binary trees leaves step by step from left to right until the whole tree becomes empty.
Input: root = [1,2,3,4,5]
Output: [[4,5,3],[2],[1]]
Design a chat application similar to whatsapp/slack (1 hr)
- 1B users, 10M DAU
- Discussion on API Design, DB choices, guaranteed message delivery
Describe your most critical bug and how you handled it.
What have you done to increase the productivity of the team?
A question on binary search similar to: https://leetcode.com/problems/koko-eating-bananas/description/
A question on stack similar to finding the next greater element.
Discuss SQL vs NoSQL databases.
Explain database indexing.
Discuss scalability at each layer of a distributed system.