Flipkart Interview Questions

Interview Process

Now that I'm sure you're interested in working at Flipkart, let me guide you through the whole process for your SDE interview (internship and full time roles). SDE stands for Software Development Engineer. The creation of features based on product requirements is done by the SDE1-4 engineers at Flipkart. Here, you must know the best practices of code, design principles and patterns. Any code you write must also be maintainable and extensible. You must also develop a deep understanding of non-functional requirements, such as reliability and availability, scaling, etc over time and make tech stack decisions accordingly.

Oh gee, feeling intimidated? Don't worry, read on. We'll break down the interview process better for you. Give this article a thorough read and you'll be working your dream job.

Interview Rounds

1. Interview Process for an SDE intern position

   • Round 1: Online Coding Round

     The first round for this position is generally an online coding round with 2 coding questions to be solved within a time limit. Both the questions are based on basic DSA (data structures and algorithms).

     In the interview process for the SDE intern role there will be 3 rounds (after the on campus rounds) of which the first two will be the technical rounds focused on Problem Solving and Data Structures.

   • Round 2 & 3: Online Coding Round PS/ DS (Problem Solving / Data Structures):

     Checking your comfort level with data structures, algorithms etc will be the main focus of the interviewer. The Data Structures and Algorithms would include arrays, graphs, trees, tries, DP, recursion, linked list, stacks and queues, maps, heaps and so on. They will also pay attention to how you approach the problem.

     So what is the flow of the interview?

     1. First, the question will be shared with you. Once that is done, it is expected from you that you first understand the problem shared. Do not hesitate to ask questions about the problem to the interviewer, asking questions is important!
     2. After creating a basic understanding of the question you've got, you would now have to come up with an approach to solve the problem. You'll have to decide the algorithm you want to use, or the data structure that could be useful in solving the given problem. You could come up with a basic brute force solution and optimize it later.
     3. Throughout the interview, you can ask the interviewer for some hints, or they may give you some on their own to guide you into solving the problem a particular way. Remember that you're not alone in this! So stay alert and proactive when asking doubts or for hints.
     4. Now, can you earn some extra brownie points? Yes of course! Talk about the time and space complexities of your code, and also how it handles the corner cases. If you're also great at picking up the hints dropped to you, and getting the code correct after that, you get more points.
     5. You could also be asked for pseudo code (not complete code, generally an algorithm written in english following a preferred language's format).
   • Round 4: Hiring Manager Round

     The Final Round of the process would be a Hiring Manager round, which is generally taken by an Engineering Manager of the team for which you are giving an interview.
     This round is focused more on checking how well you would fit into the Flipkart world, with the panel evaluating you on your cultural fit as well as other soft skills such as communication, attitude, etc.
     In order to ace this round, it is advisable to have gone in detail through your resume (esp the projects) and being true to who you are!

     So now you know about an internship at Flipkart, but what about full time roles?

2. Interview Process for Full-time SDE positions:

   The interview process at Flipkart for full time SDE positions generally has 5 rounds.

   • Phone Screening
   • Machine Coding
   • Problem solving and Data Structure
   • Design
   • Managerial Round

   Let's delve into each of the phases.

   • Round 1 : Phone Screening

     This round lasts longer than the previous one, about 60 minutes. You'll have a conversation with the HR before you come for an on site interview . This is a specialized screening round which is fundamentally centered around past work insight, job qualification and a couple of critical thinking questions pertinent to the job you're being interviewed for.
     This too will be on either telephone or hangouts, and you will be asked more about your past projects in detail to get a better insight into your strengths and weaknesses.

     NOTE: that this round may or may not be conducted on a case to case basis.

   • Round 2 : Machine Coding

     Well here comes one of the most important rounds in the complete interview process. This round lasts about 2 hours where they ask you a low level design question. Talk about exhausting! Campus freshers, don't worry. This round can be skipped for you.
     To understand the flow, Flipkart has divided this into 3 sub sections, Pre-coding, Coding and Post-coding. The pre and post coding sections typically last just about 15 minutes, while the coding section lasts about 90 minutes.

     • Pre-Coding:

       In this section you will be explained the problem in detail. Again, do not hesitate to ask any questions that you may have to clarify your understanding of the problem statement.

     • Coding:

       Just as the name suggests, you will be working on writing executable codes for the problem statement explained to you in the pre-coding section. In the middle, your interviewer may have 1 or 2 checkpoints. Toward the end of this stage, you are relied upon to send your code to the interviewer. Note that this stage can be for a lesser length in specific cases. In the interview, you are required to write industry level code.

     • Post-Coding:

       In this stage, you will be showing a detailed demo of the program you have written. The interviewer will give you a few test cases to test the program for expected outputs.

   • Round 3 : Problem Solving and Data Structures

     This round involves programming questions from various data structures. The ones that you're expected to know in depth are Array, Stack, Queue, Linked list, Heap, HashMap, Tree and Graph. The most common types of topics that are expected are String Manipulation, Two Pointers, Searching, Sorting, Backtracking, Bit Manipulation, and Dynamic Programming.

   • Round 4 : System Design Round

     NOTE: This round will only take place for a senior SDE position such as SDE 2 or greater. If you're applying for an SDE 1 position, you will have a DSA (Data structure and Algorithm) round in place of this.

     In the design round you will be solving and discussing a non-trivial design problem. There are two types of design interviews: Systems Design and Object Oriented Design (OOD). You may be asked to solve a broad design problem like ‘Design Twitter’ (System Design) or ‘Design a Parking Lot’ (OOD). This round typically lasts for 60 minutes.
     You are relied upon to make a versatile framework with the compromises needed to accomplish that. There is no particular answer expected in this round, and it is more about the interviewer and the interviewee examining the compromises and prerequisites and thinking of an answer.

     In an OOD interview, you're required to plan a genuine problem dealing with design standards and examples to such an extent that the solution is viable and extensible. Most concepts of Object Oriented Programming (OOPs) and design principles are used in this round, so be sure to brush up on them.

     To prepare for this particular round it is advisable to read engineering blogs to get a grasp on how companies usually design their systems. Netflix TechBlog and High Scalability are some of the best engg blogs.

   • Round 5 : Managerial Round ( Team and Culture Fitment)

     The plan of this round is to assess your group fitment dependent on your experience, interests and qualities shown across different rounds. In this round, you'll associate with your potential group manager/recruiting director who will attempt to become more acquainted with you better to make an educated decision and make sure that you're the right individual for the work.

     This round too, just like most other rounds, lasts for about 60 minutes. The interviewer will make an attempt to understand your aspirations, strengths, weaknesses and basically all about you. This can also be considered as a summary round because you will be asked about the competencies shown by you in the previous rounds.

     Flipkart is one of the companies that takes all decisions based on the values that they have set for themselves. You know, the ones we read about in the beginning of this article.
     In this round you will be evaluated for how well you will fit in the work culture at Flipkart. There are absolutely no right or wrong answers for his round.

     Some specific tips for this round:
     

     • Read about the values at Flipkart (don't worry, we've already discussed them)
     • Be honest about yourself
     • Take some time to prepare for the interview
     • Be completely candid

     That's all for the SDE interview!

3. Topics to Brush up Before the Interview

   1. Low Level Design
   2. Programming
   3. Coding Skills
   4. Data Structures and Algorithms
   5. Design Patterns and Principles
   6. System Architecture and its components

   You must be wondering about the interview process for higher SDE levels. Let's look into the process for the same.

   The flow of the interview process for SDE 3 and 4 is the same as SDE 1 and 2. There are a few key differences between the two, since SDE 3 and SDE 4 are at a higher level than 1 and 2.

   Major differences can be noted in the coding round.

   • In this interview, your coding competency will be judged comprehensively. You will have to write a fully working code as a solution on your laptop, for which expectations will be high and very explicitly set.
   • It is strongly recommended to write code in a language that is object oriented and has good libraries for concurrency / parallelism.
   • Your focus should be on code hygiene (readability, modular, and testability), functional correctness and completeness, language proficiency (use the appropriate language constructs wherever applicable) and error handling (identify the failure scenarios and necessary validations, and come up with the right error-handling mechanism).

   To prepare for the coding round, picking up real world problems and taking a stab at them would be helpful. During the interview, make sure you're asking enough questions to get a good clarity of the problem at hand. At the same time, also be prepared for any new complexities that could be introduced by the interviewer.

   Another major round would be the Design and Architecture round.

   With Design and Architecture as main points of focus, 1 or 2 real world problems would be discussed in the interview. You are expected to provide a solution with multiple components and provide class design, REST/RPC interface design and software architecture (logical view and deployment view).
   Your solution is expected to work in a distributed environment, leverage parallelism wherever possible and handle concurrency.

   As you might already know, there can be 2 types of design - Low level, and high level designs. Both or one of these can be asked in the interview.

   For a question based on Low Level Design be sure to come up with a Logical View and a Process View.

   Your logical view should cater to the following points - Domain Entity Identification (Identify the key domain entities and their value objects), assign roles and responsibilities to each of the identified entities, identify the relationship between entities and association between entities.

   While making the process view, keep the following points in mind -

   • Come up with APIs which will be exposed for consumption (need not be RESTful)
   • Give a prototype for some of the identified APIs in the following format - <ReturnType> <Name>(Params ..) <Exceptions/Errors>
   • Talk about your conventions on prototyping and API design.

   For High Level Design questions, Identify the components by their functionality, characterize the components from their NFR point-of-view (i.e., function of components like Low Latent Key-Value Store, etc.), talk about their interactions (e.g., WebService, DataStore, Cache, Queue, etc.) and preferred approaches for interactions (Sync, Async, Job, etc.).