SDE 2 Safe Security Interview Experience | Rejected
Summary
I interviewed for an SDE 2 role at Safe Security in New Delhi, went through three rounds including a coding problem (Climbing Stairs) and a system design task, and was ultimately rejected.
Full Experience
Got the job through a LinkedIn search and applied directly on their career portal for a position based out of New Delhi India. Received a call from the recruiter 4-5 days after submitting the application.
Difficulty: easy-medium
Round 1: 15-minute Technical Screening
Introduction, discussion about a challenging project, and CS fundamentals such as TCP vs UDP, Process vs Threads, HTTP vs HTTPS, and the CAP Theorem.
Round 2: Technical Round
Covered similar topics as Round 1, along with “What happens when you search a URL in the browser?” and database indexes 1 coding question: Climbing Stairs https://leetcode.com/problems/climbing-steps/
There was also a variation where I had to print all possible paths.
Round 3: System Design
Explained the architecture of a challenging project using draw.io.
Q/ Design a search autocomplete system (similar to Chapter 13 from Alex Xu’s System Design book).
This round did not go well because I had never worked on or studied this problem before and was not familiar with concepts like Trie database and Trie cache
Verdict: Rejected
Interview Questions (2)
Climbing Stairs
Given a number of steps n, count the number of distinct ways to reach the top of the staircase when you can climb either 1 or 2 steps at a time. (LeetCode problem)
Search Autocomplete System
Design a search autocomplete system similar to the one described in Chapter 13 of Alex Xu’s System Design book.