INTERVIEW ROUNDS

The hiring manager round

A conversation with the manager of the team you would join, mixing your past work, behavioral questions, motivation and often a design or coding question. At Apple and many India product companies it carries the most weight.

What happens

The manager wants to know whether you will succeed on their team: the depth of your past work, how you handle problems, why you want this role and how you work with others. Expect a project deep dive and questions like "why are you leaving?". Some managers add a design question about their own system.

What is expected at each level

SDE 1 · New grad to about 2 years

Motivation, learning, a project walk-through and sometimes CS fundamentals.

SDE 2 · About 2 to 5 years

Ownership of features, handling production issues, working with product and other teams.

SDE 3 · Senior, about 5 to 10 years

Technical leadership, mentoring, and how you choose what to work on.

SDE 4 · Staff, principal and above

Strategy, influence without authority and the biggest bets you have made.

How to prepare

• Research the team’s product and prepare two questions about their roadmap.
• Have a clear, positive answer to "why this company and why now".
• Prepare the architecture of your current system with numbers.

Common mistakes

• Talking badly about your current employer
• Not having questions for the manager
• Overclaiming a team’s work as your own

Companies that use it

• Microsoft · All levels
  The final conversation, historically called the 'As Appropriate' (AA) interview, covers background and behavioral questions and often one open design question.
• Apple · All levels
  After a short recruiter call, the hiring manager often does a technical deep dive on your past projects and asks 'Why Apple?'; some teams start with this call.
• Netflix · All levels
  The hiring manager goes through your past work and team fit; on some teams this happens after team matching.
• Uber · All levels
  Collaboration & Leadership: a behavioral round, usually with the hiring manager, on past projects and conflicts.
• LinkedIn · All levels
  A behavioral and culture round on ownership, influence, career growth and handling hard migrations.
• Stripe · All levels
  A behavioral round with the hiring manager on ownership, collaboration and the operating principles.
• Atlassian · SDE 2, SDE 3, SDE 4
  One past project in depth, ownership, mentoring and how you collaborate.
• Goldman Sachs · All levels
  Why you are switching, why this firm, situational questions, sometimes a DSA problem.
• Salesforce · All levels
  An architecture walkthrough of your current system plus behavioral questions; for AMTS it includes a coding problem.
• Oracle · All levels
  Project architecture, behavioral questions and sometimes a design prompt.
• Adobe · All levels
  A managerial round mixing a project deep dive, concurrency and API questions, a design question, and usually one DSA problem.
• Flipkart · SDE 1, SDE 2, SDE 3
  Past projects, the architecture of your current org, and behavioral questions.
• Walmart Global Tech · SDE 1, SDE 2, SDE 3
  A project deep dive plus behavioral questions, sometimes with a design or coding question.
• PhonePe · SDE 1, SDE 2, SDE 3
  Your current project's architecture in depth (sharding, replication, APIs), sometimes with a design problem.
• Swiggy · SDE 1, SDE 2, SDE 3
  Projects, scaling choices and culture fit.
• Razorpay · SDE 1, SDE 2, SDE 3
  Projects, ownership, production incidents, and CS fundamentals for junior roles.

Other rounds

The online assessment (OA) · The phone screen · The coding round (DSA) · The AI-assisted coding round · Low-level design and machine coding · The system design round (HLD) · Team-specific rounds · The behavioral round · The bar raiser round · Team match and hiring committee