Qualys Interview Experience for SE2 Java

Overview

I have 2 YOE in a product based company, The interview consists of 2 Technical rounds with Prinicpal Engineers (15+ YOE) & 1 Managerial round

Technical Round 1

Mainly focused on resume (work exp + projects + DSA)

1. How would your typical day be in your current org?
2. JWT internals
3. Authentication vs Authorization (including error codes)
4. How did you implement Sliding windo rate limiting algo in Lua Scipt?
5. Redis Internals
6. How is Lua Script atomic in nature?
7. Top K Freq elements coding problem (DSA medium): Code should run

Technical Round 2

Focused on Java + Springboot + Backend Fundamentals

1. Explain all the rate Limiting algos you have implemented & their pros & cons? (project based question)
2. Explain synchronized in Java?
3. How will you make production logs debuggable?
4. Springboot Injector, and other annotations
5. Design an order service, how will you make POST calls idempotent?
6. Is a Annagram coding probkem(DSA easy)
7. Views & questions on vibe coding & Agentic coding

Managerial Round

Focused on Technical questions + Behavioural + CTC expectations

1. What was your most excited project that you worked in prev org?
2. If cache latency is in seconds, how will you optimise to ms?
3. How will you handle DB operations to multiple DB's?
4. How will you handle conflicts between the data?
5. Is Redis Single threaded? why and how
6. What is your current & expected CTC
7. How should we ensure, you will not to do Offer Hopping?

Interview Tip:

They are expecting people from good product based companies to have an engineering mindset & people who already have product experience (debuggin, oncall, development, ownership, passion, learning, etc.,) Prepare Backend Fundamentals + System Design to qualify for a senior role

Result: Selected

My current salary: 11 LPA Base + remote Qualys offer: ~14 LPA Base + 10% Bonus (1.4L) + 60k PF+ some ESOPS 3 days work from office (Pune), need to complete 27 hours in office a week.