🚀 Tekion SSE Drive (August) – My Experience (Ghosted at the End)

I recently participated in Tekion's SSE hiring drive in August 2025. I hold a B.Tech from a Tier-1 university and am currently an SDE-2 at a FAANG company (though I presented myself as an SDE-1 during the process). My expected CTC was 35LPA+, which they seemed open to exceeding.

Round 1 – DSA (Onsite, pen + paper)

This round consisted of two DSA problems which I had to solve using pen and paper. One was a DFS-based problem and the other was a sliding window problem with a small trick. I successfully solved both and discussed my approach with a Staff SWE, as all SSEs were occupied. Later, the recruiter confirmed that I received positive feedback for this round.

Round 2 – HLD (Staff SWE)

This Higher-Level Design round caught me a bit off guard. The problem statement was simply: "Design a system that accepts a continuous stream of data." I decided to approach it with an event-driven pipeline, utilizing tools like Kafka or SQS for message queuing, an ECS-based processing layer, and Redis for quick data access, with an option to persist data in a traditional database. The interviewer pressed me on why not just use a simple database, and I explained the trade-offs involved. It wasn't my best performance, but I managed to navigate through it.

Round 3 – LLD (SSE)

The Low-Level Design round focused on designing a Food Delivery System. The expectation was to start with a quick HLD overview, then dive into detailed aspects like DB schema design, specifically considering geospatial databases for efficient nearby restaurant queries. I also had to design APIs and the service-level architecture, concluding with discussions on design patterns such as Factory or Observer. I did all of this live on Excalidraw and felt very confident about my performance, receiving a positive signal.

Round 4 – Hiring Manager (Sr. SDM)

The final round was with a Senior SDM and primarily involved deep dives into my current services and projects, along with various ownership and behavioral questions. The goal was also to assess my alignment with the team's culture and needs. The Hiring Manager appeared satisfied with my responses.

What Happened Next?

After completing Round 3, I was informed that Round 4 would be virtual on a subsequent Monday. I requested a one-week extension as I was preparing for a Meta OA. I completed Round 4 later and felt it went well, but then I was met with complete silence – I was ultimately ghosted by Tekion.