CRED

Role: SDE II (Backend Engineer)

College: Not Specified

Interview Date: March 2021

Interview Type: Not Specified

Result: Not Specified

Difficulty: Medium-Hard

Rounds: 4 rounds

Topics Asked: Machine Coding (Column-oriented KV store), Data Structures (binary search, 1D DP), System Design (schema, failure cases, idempotency, data deduplication), Hiring Manager (behavioral, career journey, challenges, impact)

Experience:

This interview experience for an SDE II Backend Engineer role at CRED involved four distinct rounds.

Coding round (Medium-Hard, 2 hours): This was a machine coding round where an open-ended statement was provided, and the candidate had to implement and demo features. The specific task was to implement a column-oriented Key-Value store similar to HBase, with a focus on clean, modular, and testable code. The interviewer emphasized working, running code.

Data Structures round (Easy, 1.5 hours): This round consisted of two problems: one on binary search and another on basic 1D Dynamic Programming. Interviewers were friendly and also focused on working code.

System Design round (Medium): After an hour of problem-solving, system design was integrated into the same meeting. The discussion revolved around schema, failure cases, idempotency, data deduplication, and the feasibility of building the proposed solution at CRED.

Hiring Manager round (Hard): This round was challenging for the candidate due to a perceived lack of empathy from the Hiring Manager. Questions focused on the candidate's experience, reasons for joining CRED, career journey, challenges faced, difficult situations, and the impact created in previous roles. The advice was to prepare stories backed with data points and in-depth examples.

The overall experience was positive, with friendly recruiters and significant learnings.