Quince Interview Experience – SDE 2 ( Rejected )

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quince
SDE 2
June 28, 20255 reads

Summary

I experienced multiple interview rounds for an SDE 2 role at Quince, which included DSA, LLD, and System Design. I was ultimately rejected after fumbling the System Design round, which highlighted the importance of fundamental practice.

Full Experience

Interview Rounds

Round 1: DSA + LLD

  • Q1. Asteroid Collision – Leetcode Medium
  • Q2. Design Chess
    LLD-focused question on OOP design, piece movement, board representation, etc.

Round 2: DSA

  • Q1. Search in a Sorted 2D Matrix
  • Q2. Top K Frequent Words

Round 3: System Design

  • Q1. Design SplitWise
    This was my first real System Design round. I fumbled a bit and couldn't present a clear and structured approach. It made me realize the importance of System Design fundamentals and practice.

Interview Questions (5)

Q1
Asteroid Collision
Data Structures & AlgorithmsMedium

The problem 'Asteroid Collision' from LeetCode.

Q2
Design Chess
System Design

LLD-focused question on OOP design, piece movement, board representation, etc.

Q3
Search in a Sorted 2D Matrix
Data Structures & Algorithms

The problem 'Search in a Sorted 2D Matrix'.

Q4
Top K Frequent Words
Data Structures & Algorithms

The problem 'Top K Frequent Words'.

Q5
Design SplitWise
System Design

Design the SplitWise application.

Preparation Tips

These are the articles which i have collected from various website and leetcode to prepare for the interview.

DSA

  1. Trapping rainwater question with running code. Asked to write the prefix approach and two pointer approach as well. *** VVVIMP -> done
  2. https://www.naukri.com/code360/problems/count-distinct-element-in-every-k-size-window_920336 -> done
  3. Find a target element in a sorted array -> 2024 -> done
  4. Modified version of LIS
  5. Sliding window.
  6. From the given list of strings, find the first k most occurring strings -> 2024 -> Done
  7. 589. IP Address Validator -> Done
  8. leetcode medium - question no - 554 brick-wall
  9. Detect Cycle in a graph. Remove edge from the graph to make it acyclic -> October 2024
  10. Three Sum -> 2023
  11. modified Binary Search -> 2023
  12. Longest substring without repeating characters -> 2021
  13. Longest Palindrome substring of a given string -> 2021
  14. Right View Of A Binary Tree ->https://leetcode.com/problems/binary-tree-right-side-view/
  15. Max Consecutive Ones III -> https://leetcode.com/problems/max-consecutive-ones-iii/

LLD

  1. BookMyShow -> Done
  2. Design Chess -> Done
  3. Hotel Booking -> Done
  4. Design Patterns in Java -> Done
  5. LLD of Google Document -> Partial Need Revision
  6. Meeting Hall Scheduler -> Done
  7. Flight booking system
  8. Coupon management system - FR, NFR, LLD - classes, design patterns and schema, HLD
  9. Snake and Ladder -> Done
  10. High Level Design Of Flush Feature In Hibernate
  11. High Level Design Of Rate Limiter
  12. Low Level Design Of Online Book Store
  13. Parking Lot - Done
  14. Logging -> because mentioned in resume
  15. Restaurant Management System -> Done

Other

  1. async event processing questions
  2. Temporal and Airflow related questions
  3. MySQL types of indexes grilling
  4. What is the most challenging and biggest project you have worked on?

Q1. Design Meeting Room Booking System -> June 2025 -> Done
Requirements:

  • Multiple meeting rooms in a building
  • Add meeting rooms with capacity
  • Book a room for a time slot
  • Same room can be re-booked after the slot ends
  • Choose optimal room based on participant count
  • Send notification after scheduling
  • Add meeting to calendar of host and participants
  • Handle concurrent booking (locking to prevent double booking)

Q2 -> Apr 22, 2025 -> Done
-> The interviewer was very involved, co-operative and helpful in discussion.
-> Deliverables : Completed P1 requirements within interviewer’s satisfaction.
-> Class Diagram was the main focus throughout.
-> Design a conference room booking system.
P1 : Handle case where 2 users want to book same room.
P1 : User will ask for a room for a particular timeslot.
P1 : User can ask to book a specific room as well.
P2 : A meeting can not be for more than 6 hours.

Restaurant Management System -> Done

  • Discussion on Entity-Relations
  • Discussion on APIs
  • Discussion on SOLID and Design Patterns
  • Discussion on booking API for multiple bookings
  • Discussion on DB locking
  • Code for the APIs

Ludo Game design
-> API design
-> Actors and usecases
-> websocket usecases in the design

Hotel Booking
-> Class Diagram + Code for Booking hotel rooms
-> Extreme focus on Concurrency.

Chess HLD
-> focus was on DB schema,
-> DB choice, B+ Tree v/s LSM Tree DBs....

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