Zomato / Eternal | SDE-1 Interview Experience
Summary
I interviewed for an SDE-1 role at Zomato, going through a system design task, a production debugging scenario, and a graph‑theory proof question.
Full Experience
So after this - https://leetcode.com/discuss/post/8377019/zomato-eternal-sde-1-interview-experienc-l2yh/
… After like 3-4 weeks, I got another opportunity from a different team at Zomato. The same recuriter reached out to me directly.
Round 1
1. Notification System Design
I was asked to design a notification system. The discussion went beyond the basic design and included constraints such as:
- How other teams/services would integrate with the notification service.
- Preventing duplicate notifications.
- Implementing cooldowns at both the user level and team level.
- Designing APIs and discussing scalability.
The interviewer kept adding constraints throughout the discussion.
2. Production Debugging Scenario
The next question was based on a real production incident the team had resolved around 10 days earlier.
The interviewer showed me a production database spike graph and asked:
- What could have caused the spike?
- How would you investigate it?
- What changes would you make to flatten the spike, you can't increase latency or scale the system?
3. Graph Theory
The final question was a graph problem based on a story involving transformers.
Interestingly, the interviewer wasn't interested in code or even pseudocode. Instead, they wanted a mathematical proof of why the proposed solution was correct. The entire discussion revolved around proving the correctness of the algorithm rather than implementing it.
Interview Questions (3)
Notification System Design
Design a notification system with considerations for:
- Integration of other teams/services with the notification service.
- Prevention of duplicate notifications.
- Implementation of cooldowns at both user and team levels.
- API design and scalability concerns. The interviewer added constraints throughout the discussion.
Production Debugging Scenario
Given a production database spike graph from a recent incident, answer:
- Possible causes of the spike.
- Investigation steps you would take.
- Changes you would implement to flatten the spike without increasing latency or scaling the system.
Graph Theory Proof Problem
A graph problem presented as a story involving transformers. The interviewer required a mathematical proof of why the proposed algorithm is correct, focusing on correctness proof rather than code implementation.