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

SDE - 1

1 rounds | 3 Coding problems

Rejected candidate experience

Interview preparation journey

Journey

I applied for the role through the on-campus placement portal at IIT Guwahati. My journey began in August, with a strong focus on DSA and core computer science subjects. The process started with a rigorous Online Assessment (OA), which included sections on coding, math/aptitude, and CS fundamentals.

Application story

I applied through an on-campus opportunity. The OA was conducted at night. I prepared for DSA, graph, and tree questions from coding platfroms

Why selected/rejected for the role?

I was rejected at the interview, as the questions were of a higher difficulty level, so I couldn’t qualify for the further rounds.

Preparation

Duration: 3 - 4 months

Topics: Data Structures, pointers, OOPs, system design, algorithms, dynamic programming

Tip

Tip 1: Practice at least 250 questions.

Tip 2: Do at least 2 projects.

Tip 3: Practice company's past OA questions, if available.

Application process

Where: Campus

Eligibility: No criteria, (Salary Package - 18 LPA)

Resume tip

Tip 1: Have some projects on your resume.

Tip 2: Do not include false information on your resume.

Interview rounds

Round

Hard

Online Coding Test

Duration105 minutes

Interview date7 Oct 2025

Coding problem3

1. Distribute N candies among K people

Easy

15m average time

85% success

0/40

Asked in companies

Sanyam has ‘N’ candies, he wants to distribute that into ‘K’ of his friends. He made his ‘K’ friends stand in line, in increasing order of his likeness. Not being so smart he gives 1 candy to the first friend, 2 to the second person, and so on till the kth person. In the next turn, the first person gets ‘K + 1’ candies, the second person gets ‘K + 2’ candies, and so on.

While distributing the candies, if at a turn, the number of candies to be given to a friend is less than the required candies, then that friend gets all the remaining candies and Sanyam stops the distribution.

Your task is to find the total number of candies every person has at the end.

Problem approach

Binary Search for Full Rounds: The total number of candies k can be very large (1014). Instead of simulating, use binary search to find the maximum number of full rounds R you can complete. A round is "full" if you can give 1 candy to every animal that still needs one.

Calculate Remaining Candies: After R full rounds, some animals are "finished" (if ai≤R). Subtract the candies eaten in these R rounds from k.

Final Simulation: With the remaining k′ candies (where k′< number of active animals), iterate through the animals one last time. If an animal still needs candies, give it one and decrement k′. Once k′ reaches zero, the current animal is finished; output the indices of all other animals that still need more than R candies (or R+1 if they were already passed in this last partial round).

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2. Check If Binary Representation of a Number is Palindrome

Easy

15m average time

80% success

0/40

Asked in companies

Ninja is given an integer ‘N’. Ninja wants to find whether the binary representation of integer ‘N’ is palindrome or not.

A palindrome is a sequence of characters that reads the same backward as forward.

Ninja is busy with his training. Help Ninja in finding out whether the binary representation of ‘N’ is palindrome or not.

Problem approach

Generate Candidate Palindromes: A binary palindrome of length L is determined by its first ⌈L/2⌉ bits. Since N can be up to 1018 (approx 60 bits), generate palindromes of length len(N)−1, len(N), and len(N)+1.

Constructing from Prefix: For a fixed length L, take the first half of N's binary representation. Create three palindromes by:

Using the prefix as is.

Subtracting 1 from the prefix.

Adding 1 to the prefix.
(This covers the closest values numerically).

Find Minimum Difference: Convert these binary candidates back to decimals. Calculate the absolute difference with N and pick the one with the smallest difference.

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3. Count elements in all subtrees

Easy

10m average time

90% success

0/40

Asked in companies

You are given an arbitrary tree consisting of 'N' nodes numbered from 0 to 'N' - 1. You need to find the total number of elements in all the subtrees of the given tree. In other words, given a generic tree, find the count of elements in the subtrees rooted at each node.

A subtree of a tree T is a tree S consisting of a node in T and all of its descendants in T. The subtree corresponding to the root node is the entire tree. For better understanding, refer to the image below:-

Note:

1. The tree will always be rooted at 0. 
2. You can return the count of nodes in any order.
3. The root of any subtree is also counted in the subtree thus the count of nodes in a subtree rooted at a leaf node is 
4. You can return the numbers in any order.

Problem approach

Identify Heavy/Light Children: For each node, find the "heavy" child (the child with the largest subtree size). All other children are "light."

The "DSU on Tree" Logic:

Recursively solve for all light children but clear their data (e.g., map or frequency array) after solving.

Recursively solve for the heavy child and keep its data.

Iterate through all light children again, adding their subtree values into the heavy child's existing data.

Answer the Query: Now the data structure contains all the info for node u's subtree. Store the answer for node u. By keeping the heavy child's data, you ensure each node is added to a data structure at most O(logN) times.

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