Piramal Finance | SDE-2 | Bangalore
Summary
I went through four interview rounds for an SDE-2 role at Piramal Finance in Bangalore. I passed the first three rounds but was rejected after the HLD discussion.
Full Experience
Education - Tier 3 college
CTC- 24lpa
4 Rounds (1 virtual, 3 f2f):
Round 1 (DSA 1hr):
Q1 - Course Schedule II
Solved this in 40 mins. Had less time for the second question.
Q2 - Maximum Score From Removing Substrings
At first couldn't think about the solution but the interviewer gave me a good hint and I solved it, though I couldn’t provide a working code due to time.
Verdict - passed - interviewer was really helpful.
F2F rounds same day:
Round 2 (AI round):
I was to design a full working application "playo" in 30 mins using AI. I used Cursor AI. The round was done in batches of 5‑6 people with one interviewer. I solved it first, showed the code, and explained it. The interviewer also checked my prompts with AI to evaluate.
Verdict - passed.
After 10 mins I was asked to come for LLD.
Round 3 (LLD round 1hr):
I was asked to design a Risk Analysis engine. I don’t remember the full requirements, but it was like an internal loan application tool. I designed the low‑level design with APIs and then discussed high‑level aspects such as scaling, DB, and edge cases.
Verdict - passed (Strong hire) - interviewer was really nice to talk to.
After 10 mins I was asked to come for HLD.
Round 4 (HLD round 1hr):
He asked me to design a Rate Limiter. The interviewer was rude, didn’t introduce himself, and was aggressive. He asked many unrelated questions about sliding‑window algorithms while I was describing functional and non‑functional requirements. I eventually presented a design, but the interview ended abruptly.
Verdict - Rejected.
The last round, HM, was pending and not an elimination round.
Lesson learned – interviewers don’t always come to hire you. :)
Interview Questions (2)
Course Schedule II
Given the total number of courses and a list of prerequisite pairs, return an ordering of courses you can take to finish all courses. If it’s impossible to finish all courses, return an empty list.
Maximum Score From Removing Substrings
Given a string consisting of the characters ‘a’ and ‘b’, you can repeatedly remove the substrings "ab" or "ba" to earn points (different points for each pattern). The goal is to maximize the total score obtained after all possible removals.