Arcesium interview experience Real time questions & tips from candidates to crack your interview

SDE - 2

Arcesium
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4 rounds | 7 Coding problems

Interview preparation journey

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Preparation
Duration: 6 months
Topics: Data Structures, Algorithms, OOPS, DBMS, System Design
Tip
Tip

Tip 1 : Know commonly used Data Structures and Algorithns.
Tip 2 : Be consistent while practicing. Solve atleast one question daily.
Tip 3 : It is better to solve good quality of questions, instead of just solving a lot of questions.
Tip 4 : If you are preparing for SDE 2, system design will definitely be asked. Prepare both High level design and Low level design.

Application process
Where: Other
Eligibility: Need atleast 2 year experience. Should have experience as a developer.
Resume Tip
Resume tip

Tip 1 : Mention only those projects you have actually worked upon and know well. You will be asked a lot of questions from it.
Tip 2 : Even if people says its not true, a background as a competitive programmer boosts your resume. You can mention your ratings/ achievements from different coding websites like Leetcode, Codeforces, etc.

Interview rounds

01
Round
Medium
Online Coding Interview
Duration90 Minutes
Interview date3 Jul 2021
Coding problem2

Got the test link on mail. I was given 3 days to complete the test. The test was held on Hackerrank. Webcam was switched on and there was restriction on tab switching. There were two questions of medium level difficulty.

1. Longest Increasing Subsequence

Moderate
0/80
Asked in companies
GrabAmazonSamsung

'N' students are standing in a row. You are given the height of every student standing in the row. Your task is to find the longest strictly increasing subsequence of heights from the row such that the relative order of the students does not change.

A subsequence is a sequence that can be derived from another sequence by deleting zero or more elements without changing the order of the remaining elements.
Try solving now

2. Maximum Sum Path Of A Binary Tree.

Hard
25m average time
75% success
0/120
Asked in companies
HikeSamsungDirecti

You are given a binary tree having 'n' nodes. Each node of the tree has an integer value.


Your task is to find the maximum possible sum of a simple path between any two nodes (possibly the same) of the given tree.


A simple path is a path between any two nodes of a tree, such that no edge in the path is repeated twice. The sum of a simple path is defined as the summation of all node values in a path.

Try solving now
02
Round
Medium
Video Call
Duration60 Minutes
Interview date11 Jul 2022
Coding problem2

It was held on zoom. This was a DS algorithm based round. The interviewer was a Senior Software Developer at Arcesium

1. Trapping Rain Water

Moderate
15m average time
80% success
0/80
Asked in companies
HCL TechnologiesCiti BankAtlassian

You have been given a long type array/list 'arr’ of size 'n’.


It represents an elevation map wherein 'arr[i]’ denotes the elevation of the 'ith' bar.



Note :
The width of each bar is the same and is equal to 1.
Example:
Input: ‘n’ = 6, ‘arr’ = [3, 0, 0, 2, 0, 4].

Output: 10

Explanation: Refer to the image for better comprehension:

Alt Text

Note :
You don't need to print anything. It has already been taken care of. Just implement the given function.
Problem approach

First used brute force to solve the problem. Solution was O(N2). I was then asked to optimise. I used a 2 array approach to solve it in linear time and linear space. I was asked to optimise for space. I used tow pointer approach to reduce space complexity.

Try solving now

2. Critical Connection

Hard
60m average time
55% success
0/120
Asked in companies
HSBCAdobeFacebook

You are given a network with ‘N’ system nodes [0 to N - 1] and ‘M’ connection. Your task is to find out all critical connections in a given network.

Note: A connection between node ‘u’ and ‘v’ is said to be a critical connection, if after removal of a connection ‘u’ - ‘v’, there is no connection between node ‘u’ and ‘v’ and the network goes down.

For example:

For given N = 4, M = 4, 

1

The connection between system node 0 and 1 is a critical connection.
Try solving now
03
Round
Medium
Video Call
Duration60 Minutes
Interview date19 Jul 2022
Coding problem2

This round was mostly focused on my problem solving and the way of writing the solution. What is more.preferred : readability or optimisation

1. Valid String

Moderate
18m average time
85% success
0/80
Asked in companies
VisaAmazonArcesium

You have been given a string 'S' containing only three types of characters, i.e. '(', ')' and '*'.

A Valid String is defined as follows:

1. Any left parenthesis '(' must have a corresponding right parenthesis ')'.
2. Any right parenthesis ')' must have a corresponding left parenthesis '('.
3. Left parenthesis '(' must go before the corresponding right parenthesis ')'.
4. '*' could be treated as a single right parenthesis ')' or a single left parenthesis '(' or an empty string.
5. An empty string is also valid.

Your task is to find out whether the given string is a Valid String or not.

Try solving now

2. System Design Question

Design a rate limiter. Only maintain connections for an hour, thenterminate the connections. Some coding was required to display actual implementatio, but the discussion was mostly high level based

Problem approach

Tip 1 : Listen to the question carefully and ask for all.the requirements in the beginning.
Tip 2 : Keep saying what you are thinking for the approach. Don't just stay quiet. Even if you are think something, say it out loud whatever is going on in your mind.
Tip 3 : If you get stuck somewhere, interviewer usually drop tips/hints to guide you. Listen to those carefully

04
Round
Hard
Video Call
Duration60 Minutes
Interview date29 Jul 2022
Coding problem1

There were two interviewers. Focus was more on Low level design.

1. System Design Question

Design hotel management system. Focus was mostly on designing classes, db schema, designing table structure and columns to handle different types of requeirements coming from both customer side(such as scheduling a room, cancelling a booking, eequesting for add on facilities, user login, deleting user account, etc) and developer side( such as getting list of bookings for a particular duration, getting a list of active users, request to display system logs, proper indexing etc). Was also asked how to impelement a new requirement in an existing system.

Problem approach

Tip 1 : Listen to the question carefully and ask for all the requirements in the beginning.
Tip 2 : Keep saying what you are thinking for the approach. Don't just stay quiet. Even if you are think something, say it out loud whatever is going on in your mind.
Tip 3 : If you get stuck somewhere, interviewer usually drop tips/hints to guide you. Listen to those carefully
Tip 4 : Best way to improve is moke interviews. Grab a friend/ mentor with whom you can give mock interviews on different topics. Grokking system design interview is a good source to read different system design problems.

Here's your problem of the day

Solving this problem will increase your chance to get selected in this company

Skill covered: Programming

How do you remove whitespace from the start of a string?

Choose another skill to practice
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