SDE-2 Interview Experience at PeopleStrong
- Experience
- 3 years
- Posted
- 10 Jan 2026
Summary
I had an interview today for an SDE-2 role (~3 YOE) at PeopleStrong. The interview focused on DSA questions (including a Binary Tree problem), SQL queries, Java basics, Microservices concepts, and an in-depth discussion of my current projects, particularly Kafka and Redis. Unfortunately, I was rejected as I could not provide an optimized solution for one of the DSA problems.
How it went
Had my interview today for a SDE-2 role (~3 YOE) at PeopleStrong
Interview covered:
- 2 DSA questions (LeetCode medium – Array/Prefix sum + deque & Binary Tree level of minimum sum of subtree)
- 1 SQL query (Related to JOIN & Inner query )
- Java basics (HashMap internals, Java 8, CompletableFuture , concurrency and multi threading )
- Microservices concepts
- Deep dive into current project
Project discussion (very detailed):
- Kafka: producer-consumer flow, partitions, consumer groups, offset management, fault tolerance, broker failure scenarios
- Redis: internal working, data structures, eviction strategies (LRU/LFU), cache consistency, Redis failure handling
- Fault tolerance: retries, idempotency, handling duplicate events
Verdict: ❌ Rejected (Not able to give optimise solution of second problem.)
Takeaway: DSA + deep understanding of your own project (Kafka & Redis) is critical, even for backend-focused roles.
Hope this helps. All the best! 🚀
Questions asked (1)
- 01
Binary Tree Level of Minimum Sum Subtree
Data Structures & Algorithms · Medium
Find the level of the subtree with the minimum sum in a Binary Tree.