OCI | SMTS | Interview experience | Oracle

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· MTS II· 5y exp
January 17, 2026 · 99 reads

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
    -
image.png
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)

1.

Avoid Flood in the City

Data Structures & Algorithms
2.

Remove Binary Tree Leaves Step by Step

Data Structures & Algorithms

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]]

4.

Design a Chat Application (WhatsApp/Slack)

System Design

Design a chat application similar to whatsapp/slack (1 hr)
- 1B users, 10M DAU
- Discussion on API Design, DB choices, guaranteed message delivery

5.

Most Critical Bug

Behavioral

Describe your most critical bug and how you handled it.

6.

Increase Team Productivity

Behavioral

What have you done to increase the productivity of the team?

7.

Koko Eating Bananas (Binary Search)

Data Structures & Algorithms
8.

Next Greater Element (Stack Problem)

Data Structures & Algorithms

A question on stack similar to finding the next greater element.

9.

SQL vs NoSQL Comparison

System Design

Discuss SQL vs NoSQL databases.

10.

Database Indexing

System Design

Explain database indexing.

11.

System Scalability at Each Layer

System Design

Discuss scalability at each layer of a distributed system.

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