SDE - 1

I was already working at TATA 1mg, but at some point, I felt the need to challenge myself and grow further. While I was fairly comfortable with DSA, system design was something I wasn’t very familiar with. I also didn’t have a strong foundation or a clear roadmap when I started. On top of that, I had to manage all of this alongside a full-time job, which made the journey even more demanding. I decided to begin by strengthening my basics. I started with DSA, following a well-known 450 DSA sheet and covering topics one by one. It took me around two months to complete it with discipline and consistency. Alongside this, I regularly participated in coding contests and upsolved past contest problems. This habit significantly improved my problem-solving skills and helped me quickly identify whether a question belonged to topics like graphs, DP, or greedy algorithms, which is crucial during interviews. At the same time, I began investing focused time in backend system design. I followed Alex Xu’s System Design books (Part 1 and Part 2) to understand how real-world systems are built. For building strong fundamentals in topics like caching, consistent hashing, and scalability, I found the Hello Interview YouTube channel to be one of the best resources. Then came a turning point—I received a call from HR at Blinkit (Eternal) for an SDE-1 position. Before the interviews, I thoroughly revised my DSA sheet and practiced a few problems from each major topic to stay sharp and confident. Thanks to consistent preparation and hands-on learning, I was able to clear all the interview rounds and eventually received the offer. If there’s one takeaway I’d like to share, it’s this: you don’t need to know everything—you just need to keep moving forward, one topic and one problem at a time.

Since I was already exploring a career switch, I received a call from the Blinkit HR team, who were interested in my profile for a Backend SDE-1 role. After the initial discussion, the interview process was quickly scheduled, and I had less than a week to prepare. The entire process was well-structured and conducted over three rounds, all of which were elimination-based. The interviews were scheduled smoothly, with clear communication from the HR team at each stage, making the overall experience professional and streamlined.

All the interview rounds went well from my side, except the second one, where I felt I could have performed better. Nevertheless, I was selected.