PayPal Senior Software Engineer Interview Experience
- Posted
- 6 Apr 2026
Summary
I interviewed for a Senior Software Engineer role at PayPal, completing three rounds (DSA, HLD, DSA) over four months, but received no clear decision or feedback.
How it went
I have recently interviewed with PayPal for SSE role. It was a pool hire, not specific to any team. Below is my experience.
Round 1: This was a DSA round. I was asked below leetcode question with variation of it: https://leetcode.com/problems/steps-to-make-array-non-decreasing/description/
Round 2: This was a HLD round. I was asked to design a Web Crawler.
Round 3: This round was also a DSA round. I was asked only one question: https://leetcode.com/problems/zigzag-conversion/description/
The rounds were too frustrating and long. It almost took 4 months to complete 3 rounds. I feel like it was a waste of my time. Even all my rounds went well, they did not give any clear decision or feedback.
Also find my below interview experiences:
Amazon SDE 2: https://leetcode.com/discuss/post/7709868/amazon-sde-2-interview-experience-prime-xq7rx/
Target SSE: https://leetcode.com/discuss/post/7714447/target-india-interview-experience-sr-eng-arfi/
Ebay SSE: https://leetcode.com/discuss/post/7725248/ebay-sde-3-interview-experience-ebay-liv-b5t0/
Questions asked (3)
- 01
Steps to Make Array Non-decreasing
Data Structures & Algorithms · Medium
Open the problemGiven an integer array, determine the minimum number of steps required to make the array non‑decreasing (i.e., each element is greater than or equal to the previous one).
- 02
Web Crawler Design
System Design
Design a scalable web crawler that can fetch, parse, and store web pages efficiently while handling issues such as duplicate detection, politeness, and fault tolerance.
- 03
Zigzag Conversion
Data Structures & Algorithms · Medium
Open the problemConvert a given string to a zigzag pattern on a specified number of rows and then read the result line by line to produce a new string.