BNY Mellon Interview Experience for SDE 2024

About the Company

BNY Mellon, also known as The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation, is a global financial services company that provides a wide range of financial and investment services to individuals, institutions, and corporations. BNY Mellon is one of the largest and oldest financial institutions in the United States, with a history dating back to the 18th century. It plays a significant role in the global financial industry by offering a broad range of services that cater to the diverse needs of its clients, from individuals to large institutional investors.

My Interview Experience

1. Application Process

I applied to BNY Mellon through an on-campus placement drive by the company. There was a simple form that consisted of basic details etc.

2. Online Coding Test

The test duration was 2 hours and was conducted on the HackerEarth platform.

It consisted of 4 coding problems (1 easy, 2 medium, and 1 hard problem). I was able to solve all the problems in around 1 hour of time.

Problems

• A basic problem with string manipulation. I don’t remember the exact problem statement but it was a simple problem.
• The sum of all possible expressions of a numeric string is possible by inserting addition operators.
• The problem statement was long and confusing but at the root of it was a simple 0–1 Knapsack Problem. The only challenge here was to recognize the 0–1 pattern, following which the problem became really simple.
• You have an array called “arr” representing different denominations of money in a wallet. You can select an element from this array i.e. money[i], and perform the following operations:
  • Spend 1 dollar to transform money[i] into a value within the range of [money[i]+1, 2*money[i]].
  • Spend 1 dollar to transform money[i] into a value within the range of [ceil(money[i]/2), money[i]-1].

Your goal is to determine the minimum amount of money required to make all the denominations in the wallet equal.

3) Interviews

The next day, the shortlisted candidates for interviews were announced. As this was a pool campus drive, around 3800 students appeared for the online test and out of these, 34 students were shortlisted for interviews that were scheduled for the next day.

Round 1: Technical

In this round, I had a one-on-one interview with a senior engineer from BNY Mellon. The interview began with a brief introduction about myself. I was asked about my prior internship experiences, the tech stack I had worked with, and related questions. Subsequently, the interviewer asked about real-life implementations of certain data structures. Then, I was presented with an SQL query challenge: “Sort the results of a SELECT query without using the ORDER BY clause.” This led to a discussion on object-oriented programming (OOP) concepts, and their disadvantages, and a discussion on design principles such as Singleton and Abstract Factory.

The interviewer then shared a HackerEarth code pair link, which contained a problem statement. The task was relatively straightforward: I needed to implement a Comparator class, emphasizing the concept of runtime polymorphism in C++. My code successfully passed all the test cases, and the interviewer was satisfied with my performance.

This round lasted approximately 30 minutes, and I advanced to the next stage.

Round 2: Technical

Another one-on-one technical interview followed, starting with a discussion about my previous interview and the feedback received. The interviewer delved into my resume and posed questions related to Docker, containerization, and cloud technologies, as I had mentioned in my resume. This in-depth discussion spanned around 15–20 minutes. We also engaged in an intriguing conversation about Chat-GPT and how its applications could benefit software development. Overall, this round was informative and went well, lasting around 45 minutes.

Round 3: Technical + HR

The final round commenced with a casual conversation about my hobbies and college life. Given my background in Android Development, I was questioned about Kotlin, Android Lifecycle, and the causes of memory leaks in apps. Additionally, I was asked about my approach to learning a new tech stack. The interviewer also inquired about C++, memory allocation mechanisms, the distinctions between malloc and calloc, and stack and heap memory.

I was presented with a puzzle, which I took some time to solve after receiving a hint. To conclude, I had the opportunity to ask the interviewer questions about their experience at BNY Mellon.

This was followed by some HR questions.

This round also lasted approximately 45 minutes.

Results

I got over with all of my rounds by 6:45 p.m. The results were announced around 8:30 p.m.

14 candidates were selected, and I was fortunate to be one of them 🙂

KEY POINTS TO NOTE

• If the number of students appearing for OA is huge, solving the most number of questions and time of completion is really crucial.
• To excel in technical interviews, it’s essential to have a strong command of fundamental data structures and algorithms.
• THINK OUT LOUD. Whatever goes through your mind while solving a question or puzzle, vocalize your thoughts. This keeps the interviewer engaged and gives them a clear idea about your thinking process.
• Ask clarifying questions. The interviewers are mostly really patient and helpful and will guide you if you are stuck somewhere.
• Gather information about key aspects such as the company’s CEO and founders, the guiding principles and values that the company adheres to, any notable awards or recognitions that the company has received, and other pertinent details that can demonstrate your genuine interest and knowledge about the organization.
• Lastly, be confident, honest and have a positive outlook.