PayPal Bangalore SE 3 Interview

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paypal
SE 3Bangalore
April 2, 20254 reads

Summary

I was selected for the SE 3 role at PayPal Bangalore after successfully completing a Hackerrank Online Assessment and four interview rounds focusing on DSA, System Design, Role Specialization, and Leadership Principles.

Full Experience

Hackerrank OA: 2 medium to hard DSA questions, don't remember exact questions since it happened long back.

Round 1 - Area of Focus: DSA Expectations: Ability to optimize code, discuss alternative approaches, and manage more complex edge cases. Expected to start thinking about scalability.

1.Design Round Robin - 
    - given a number of task and time, we have to assign available servers
    to new upcoming task and also maintain busy servers. 
    Something simillar to this, but not able to recall exact problem statement.
2.Find out palindromic sub-string from the input string.

Didn't get a chance to code any question, because we discussed more on pseudocode only, discussed on handling edge cases, and lastly interviewer was more interested in asking more questions on different cases.

Round 2 - Area of Focus: System Design Expectations: Demonstrate the ability to design systems that can scale moderately and recover from failures. Basic understanding of trade-offs in design decisions.

- Asked to design Checkout Page on ecommerce site, as I'd background working in ecommerce. 
- Discussed more depth in HLD and flow, designed API's, Performace, scalability, etc.

Round 3 - Area of focus: Role Specialisation Expectations: Ability to optimize code, discuss alternative approaches, and manage more complex edge cases. Expected to start thinking about scalability.

- Had discussed about current project
- multithreading, SOAP protocol
- How to pull 1GB of file from external source, optimized way to pull 1 million of data from external source
- trade-offs between SOAP and REST, API discussion. 
- 1 DSA Question - Remove adjacent duplicates in input string.

Round 4 - Area of Focus: Leadership Principles Expectations - Show initiative, demonstrate the ability to lead small projects or tasks, and begin mentoring or guiding others. Expected to handle conflicts constructively and contribute to team goals.

- Had intro first
- discussed about current project, challenges faced, how to takled
- how SDLC and Agile methodology used
- How to integrate or code or the action items will be before implementing something,
- and some technical aspects.

Result - Selected.

Interview Questions (8)

Q1
Design Round Robin Scheduler
Data Structures & Algorithms

Design a Round Robin scheduler. Given a number of tasks and their times, we have to assign available servers to new upcoming tasks and also maintain busy servers.

Q2
Find Palindromic Substring
Data Structures & Algorithms

Find out palindromic sub-string from the input string.

Q3
Design E-commerce Checkout Page
System Design

Asked to design a Checkout Page on an e-commerce site. Discussed in depth HLD (High-Level Design) and flow, designed APIs, performance considerations, and scalability.

Q4
Optimized Data Pull from External Source
Other

How to pull 1GB of file from an external source, and an optimized way to pull 1 million records of data from an external source.

Q5
Remove Adjacent Duplicates in String
Data Structures & Algorithms

Remove adjacent duplicates in input string.

Q6
Discuss Current Project Challenges
Behavioral

Discuss current project, challenges faced, and how they were tackled.

Q7
SDLC and Agile Methodology Usage
Behavioral

Discuss how SDLC (Software Development Life Cycle) and Agile methodology are used.

Q8
Integration and Action Items Before Implementation
Behavioral

Discuss how to integrate or code, and what action items will be taken before implementing something.

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