Zomato | SDE 1 | Gurgaon | September 2023

I had an off-campus opportunity for an SDE 1 Backend role at Zomato in Gurgaon, which I secured through a referral. My interview process consisted of three rounds.

Round 1: Technical (DSA & Technical Discussion)

The first round began with a 5-minute 'Tell me something about myself' introduction. Following this, we spent about 40 minutes discussing my internship experience, specifically how I would approach scaling the work I had done. This discussion also included a deep dive into the internal workings of DynamoDB, with several follow-up questions. Towards the end of the round, I was given a DSA question. I started with a brute-force approach and then optimized it. The problem was similar to the Kth Largest Element in an Array. This round was conducted on Google Docs.

Round 2: Technical (System Design & Zomato Specifics)

In the second round, the interviewer first introduced himself and his work. Then, for about 35 minutes, he asked me various questions related to Zomato's operations. These were scenario-based questions like 'How would you approach this?', 'What is the benefit of doing this?', 'Why should we do this?', and 'How would we handle this situation?'. After a brief 2-minute self-introduction from my side, we moved on to a 45-minute System Design question: 'Design an image upload system.' This required me to discuss which protocol I would use, write code for CRUD APIs, cover status codes, request/response payloads, headers, and authentication applications. We also discussed SQL queries related to the system, including joins, query optimization, and indexing (both implementation and applications). This round also took place on Google Docs.

Round 3: Cultural Fit

The final round was a 30-minute cultural fit discussion held at Zomato HQ in Gurgaon. It was a normal conversation where I was asked about my motivations for wanting to join Zomato and my expectations from the role and company.

Overall, I noted that while they didn't ask me much DSA, they deep-dived into System Design in both technical rounds. The verdict was positive; I was selected!