Wayfair | Software Engineer | YOE 4 | Bengaluru (India) | March 2023 [Offer]

I have a B.Tech. in Computer Science and approximately 4 years of professional experience. At the time of this interview, I had recently been laid off from a startup, which added a layer of urgency and importance to this opportunity. I applied for the Software Engineer role at Wayfair's Bengaluru office through LinkedIn.

The interview process was structured with several elimination rounds: a Recruiter Screening, followed by a Technical Screening, and then four main interview rounds encompassing DSA, HLD, LLD, and Behavioral aspects. I managed to schedule all four of these core interview rounds on a single day, with each lasting about an hour.

Interview Rounds

Round 0 (Screening)

This initial screening round was a hybrid of System Design and LeetCode-style coding.

• System Design: I was presented with scenario-based questions. These included discussions on choosing between eventual or strong consistency for different services, such as an analytical service aggregating metrics versus a transactional service handling payments. Another intriguing problem involved the load balancer for Google Docs, which assigns servers based on the hash of a document ID; I had to explain the implications of adding or removing servers and propose solutions. I also elaborated on how to display friend counts on Facebook posts for both low-scale and high-scale scenarios, touching upon cache update policies. Lastly, I discussed networking in a group chat application and strategies for handling failure scenarios.
• LC style coding: The coding question asked me to determine if two nodes in an N-ary tree (potentially with multiple roots) shared a common ancestor. The tree input was provided in a format like [[<parent node>, <child node>], [], …].

Round 1 (DSA)

This round focused purely on Data Structures and Algorithms.

• I was asked to explain and then implement the logic for adding two very large numbers represented as strings. The output needed to be formatted with commas, and the solution had to handle inputs that were already formatted.
• Following this, I had to extend the implemented logic to calculate the Fibonacci sequence for a very large 'n', implying the need to handle numbers beyond standard integer types.

Round 2 (HLD)

This was a High-Level Design round where I had to design Shazam.

• The core requirement was to create a system that could identify a song from short audio snippets uploaded by users, with the specific matching algorithm itself abstracted away. I discussed how to generate and store 10-15 snapshots of a song for identification purposes.

Round 3 (LLD)

The Low-Level Design round challenged me to design an Automated Parking Garage.

• My task involved detailing the API design, class design, and database schema design for such a system.

Round 4 (Behavioral)

This final round assessed my technical fit through a series of behavioral questions.

• Topics covered included conflict management, product exposure, peer grooming, and the impact of my work in previous roles.

It's worth noting that Rounds 2, 3, and 4 were conducted by engineers from Wayfair's Germany office. I experienced a minor communication challenge with the manager in Round 4, who was from Ukraine; my speaking pace was a bit too fast for him, which made understanding slightly difficult on his end, but I managed.