Paypal | SDE-3| Chennai |Selected

My interview process for the SDE 3 role at Paypal involved four distinct rounds. I have 7 years of experience and hold a BE IT degree from a tier 3 college.

Round 1: HackerRank Test

This initial round consisted of a HackerRank test with two medium-level LeetCode questions. Unfortunately, I don't recall the exact problems asked.

Round 2: Technical Round One

During this technical round, the interviewer presented me with two main questions:

1. The first question involved converting a decimal number to its hexadecimal equivalent.
2. The second was a classic string compression problem, where, for example, an input like aabbbcdde should result in an output of a2b3cd2e. This is a well-known problem often encountered on LeetCode.

Round 3: Technical Round Second

This round was a comprehensive mix of Java, Spring, and High-Level Design (HLD) concepts. The discussion covered:

• Detailed questions on how a Spring Boot application works and various Hibernate-related topics.
• Inquiries about Garbage Collector algorithms and other string manipulation questions.
• A system design challenge where I was asked to design a parking lot system. This system needed to support multiple floors, facilitate online booking of parking spots, and accommodate various vehicle types. I also had to elaborate on my approach to scaling the system and the database architecture I would choose.

Round 4: Hiring Manager Round

The final round was with the hiring manager and was largely managerial in nature. We discussed topics such as resolving team conflicts, managing cross-team dependencies, and my career aspirations for the next five years. It was more a behavioral assessment than a technical one.

I am pleased to say that I cleared all the interview rounds and subsequently received an offer from Paypal!