What is expected in Team-specific rounds at SDE 1?

Mostly language and CS fundamentals deep dives (Java internals, databases, OS).

What is expected in Team-specific rounds at SDE 2?

Debugging, integration or code review rounds at product companies.

What is expected in Team-specific rounds at SDE 3?

Project deep dives become central: scope, trade-offs and what you would do differently.

What is expected in Team-specific rounds at SDE 4?

Presentations or deep dives on multi-quarter work that crossed teams.

INTERVIEW ROUNDS

Team-specific rounds

Rounds a team adds for its own needs: fixing bugs in an unfamiliar codebase (Stripe Bug Bash), reviewing a pull request (Airbnb), integrating with an API from its docs, a language deep dive, or a no-code walkthrough of a past project.

What happens

These rounds test how you work on real code rather than puzzles. A debugging round gives you a failing test in a codebase you have never seen. A code review round hands you a pull request with planted problems. A project deep dive asks you to explain the architecture, decisions and impact of something you built, and the interviewer probes until they reach the limit of what you know.

What is expected at each level

Your level

SDE 1 · New grad to about 2 years: Mostly language and CS fundamentals deep dives (Java internals, databases, OS).
SDE 2 · About 2 to 5 years: Debugging, integration or code review rounds at product companies.
SDE 3 · Senior, about 5 to 10 years: Project deep dives become central: scope, trade-offs and what you would do differently.
SDE 4 · Staff, principal and above: Presentations or deep dives on multi-quarter work that crossed teams.

How to prepare

Pick two projects and prepare the architecture, the hardest decision, the numbers and what you would change.
Practise debugging by reading stack traces and forming one hypothesis at a time.
Review real pull requests in open source and write specific comments.

Common mistakes

Not knowing the details of your own project
Changing code randomly while debugging
Vague answers about impact

Companies that use it

Apple · All levels
A team-specific round: finding planted bugs in a large unfamiliar file, tracing a failing service, a project presentation, or SQL for data-heavy roles.
Netflix · SDE 3, SDE 4
Some senior loops add a concurrency, debugging, craftsmanship or operations round chosen by the team.
LinkedIn · SDE 2, SDE 3, SDE 4
Technical communication: a no-code walkthrough of a past project's architecture, decisions and impact.
Airbnb · SDE 2, SDE 3, SDE 4
Some loops include a code review round where you critique a prepared pull request seeded with bugs.
Stripe · All levels
Bug Bash: diagnose and fix a failing test or issue in an unfamiliar codebase.
Walmart Global Tech · SDE 1, SDE 2, SDE 3
A Java and tech deep dive: streams, multithreading, HashMap internals, SOLID, Spring Boot, Kafka, Redis and SQL.
Razorpay · SDE 2, SDE 3
A one-hour technical deep dive on a single past project.

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) · The behavioral round · The hiring manager round · The bar raiser round · Team match and hiring committee