Servicenow - IC3 Interview Experience
Summary
I completed seven rounds of interviews for a Senior Software Engineer (IC3) - Full stack Engineer position at ServiceNow in Hyderabad, ultimately receiving an offer despite a challenging and lengthy process, which included multiple coding and system design rounds.
Full Experience
Company : Service Now Location : Hyderabad YOE : 5.6 years Position : Senior Software Engineer (IC3) - Full stack Engineer
Round 1 - Coding
Question 1 : Leetcode 11. Container With Most Water
Solved it using standard 2-pointer solution for this problem
Question 2 : Given 2n numbers, check if we can divide them into n pairs with each pair containing same element : Eg. [3,2,3,2,2,2] - [3,3], [2,2],[2,2] - Return true
Used a set and looped through the array and inserted the element if it does not exist in set and removed the element from set if it exists already. Returned true if set is empty at the end.
Few questions on Javascript :
-> Output based questions around Promises, setTimeout, this keyword, || operations on different data types.
Answered all these questions correctly
Open ended design based question :
Design database schema and APIs for handling Credit and Debit transations in a bank
This section went well too as I incorporated all the follow up questions in my design
Round 2 - Coding
Question 1 :
Akash wants to distribute candies on his birthday. There are A people and he has two types of candies. B candies of the first type and C candies of the second type.
He wants to distribute candies in such a way that no person has candies of both types and each person has at least one candy.
Let X denotes the minimum candies among all people after distribution of candies.
Find the maximum X.
Eg. A=4 B=4 C=5
Output = 2
Solved it using binary search over range of possible valid answers. Interviewer was satisfied with the approach, sample test cases passed.
Question 2 :
Given an array A, find the nearest smaller element G[i] for every element A[i] in the array such that the element has an index smaller than i.
More formally, G[i] for an element A[i] = an element A[j] such that j is maximum possible AND j < i AND A[j] < A[i]
Elements for which no smaller element exist, consider the next smaller element as -1.
A = [1, 6, 5, 9, 10, 8, 11, 10] Output = -1 1 1 5 9 5 8 8
Proposed brute force initially and then improvised it using stack.
Round 3 - System Desgign (UI)
Design a configurable/Reusable table component - Discussion was more around what things I will be considering to make it as flexible as possible, how would the contract look like, handling complex cells in the table etc.
Overall went well, discussion felt healthy.
After these rounds, I was told that this position got cancellend and was told I was being mapped to a different position open with another team for which I have to give another round of system design and coding round since that team wanted it. Usually service now has 2 coding, 1 system design and 1 hiring manager rounds but had to given additional rounds due to this change
Round 4 - System Design
Build a messaging service - Design APIs, Database schema and Queries, basic code to process certain pieces of logic in these APIs etc
Overall went well, it felt like interviewer seemed satisifed at the end.
Round 5 - Coding
Solved it brute force using two hashmaps initially and then proposed and wrote pseudo code using dfs and interviewer looked okay at the end
Round 6 - Hiring Manager (US) General discussion about my experience, their team, and surprisingly a coding question :
Something similar to this but input won't have extra spaces. I did not have to solve it entirely, had to discuss the approach and it was a friendly discussion.
Round 7 - Hiring Manager (India)
General discussion about working culture, career, my past experience and projects.
Finally received the offer. Compensation details here - https://leetcode.com/discuss/post/6660684/servicenow-senior-software-engineer-ic3-22guq/
It was little exhausting as I had to give same rounds multiple times. I felt I was lowballed in the offered compensation especially after clearing so many rounds and servicenow compensation standards.
But having an offer after months of search finally feels like a relief.
Interview Questions (10)
Given n non-negative integers a1, a2, ..., an, where each represents a point at coordinate (i, ai). n vertical lines are drawn such that the two endpoints of line i are (i, ai) and (i, 0). Find two lines, which, together with the x-axis, forms a container, such that the container contains the most water.
Given 2n numbers, check if we can divide them into n pairs with each pair containing the same element. Example: [3,2,3,2,2,2] -> [3,3], [2,2],[2,2] -> Return true
Output based questions around Promises, setTimeout, this keyword, and || operations on different data types.
Design database schema and APIs for handling Credit and Debit transactions in a bank.
Akash wants to distribute candies on his birthday. There are A people and he has two types of candies. B candies of the first type and C candies of the second type. He wants to distribute candies in such a way that no person has candies of both types and each person has at least one candy. Let X denotes the minimum candies among all people after distribution of candies. Find the maximum X. Eg. A=4 B=4 C=5 Output = 2
Given an array A, find the nearest smaller element G[i] for every element A[i] in the array such that the element has an index smaller than i. More formally, G[i] for an element A[i] = an element A[j] such that j is maximum possible AND j < i AND A[j] < A[i] Elements for which no smaller element exist, consider the next smaller element as -1. A = [1, 6, 5, 9, 10, 8, 11, 10] Output = -1 1 1 5 9 5 8 8
Design a configurable/reusable table component. The discussion focused on considerations for flexibility, the component's contract (API), and handling complex cells within the table.
Design a messaging service, including its APIs, database schema and queries, and basic code to process certain pieces of logic in these APIs.
Given a list of accounts where each account consists of a name and a list of emails, merge these accounts. Two accounts belong to the same person if they have some email in common. Note that emails are case-insensitive. After merging, each account should consist of the name and a list of sorted unique emails. The accounts should be sorted by name and then by the first email in each account.
Implement a basic calculator to evaluate a simple expression string. The expression string contains only non-negative integers, +, -, *, / operators and empty spaces. The integer division should truncate toward zero. The input expression does not contain extra spaces, similar to LeetCode problem 227.