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D.E. Shaw Interview (1.10 years experience)

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Some recruiter from DE Shaw contacted me asking to fill a tedious form. She then told hiring team will review the form along with the resume.

After some days, I got a call saying my resume is shortlisted.

Round 1: Skype Round

There were 2 questions on Data structures and algorithms of medium difficulty. I had to code both the question on coderpad. I do not remember the question but the second question was based on graph traversal. I used bfs to solve the question. He then asked me why I didn’t use dfs. We had some discussion on bfs and dfs, in what scenarios which traversal should be preferred.

After a week, I got a call that I have been shortlisted for f2f interview. They booked a flight ticket to Hyderabad.

Round 2: 

Q1. Asked me to write code for ternary search. After I finished writing he asked me to find the run time complexity and then asked me why do we prefer binary search over ternary search.

Q2. A number N was given. You need to print all the numbers from 1 to N in dictionary order.

Example N=11. Output – {1, 10, 11, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9}; N<=10^8.

Q3. It was on a matrix containing 0s and 1s. I do not remember the exact question. He needed a solution with O(n+m) complexity.

He then asked me some concepts on SQL, ACID property. After that he asked me what is a B tree and difference between a B tree and B+Tree.

Round 3: 

This round was more on Java and OS.

Q1. Write a code for immutable class in java. Ref – https://www.journaldev.com/129/how-to-create-immutable-class-in-java

Q2. What are generics in Java. When do we use them. Is java weakly typed or strongly typed. How is  type-checking implemented.

Q3. Concepts about virtual memory and paging. What is the maximum size of virtual memory a system can have.

Q4. A question on DS. He wanted a O(logn) solution. I kept on proving him that O(logn) solution does not exist with the given constraints. He did not agree. Then he diverted and asked a different question on DS. After the interview process I checked and verified there is actually no O(logn) solution with the given constraints.

Q5. In what cases will you choose abstract classes and in what cases will you prefer an interface. Explain using an example.

Q6. What is a functional interface in Java 8 and why did Java 8 come up with functional interfaces.

After this round, HR takes you for lunch. Their cafeteria is overwhelming with amazing free food.

Round 4:

Q1. Design a end to end service that has the data for all the employees and can search based on employee name/ emp id. He was more interested in design and data structure I will use to implement search feature. Some follow up question on the same. How will you handle when there is a spike in user requests. I said we can used Database Sharding since the solution I gave involved tries. Also, since I have worked on Solr, he asked me how can you use Solr for search feature in this service.

Q2. Write a code for immutable class in Java.

Q3. Design a multilevel car parking lot with all the classes.

Q4. Find peak element in an array. He then extended the question how will you solve it if it a 2 D array. Ref-https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/find-peak-element-2d-array/

Q5. Given an array of N numbers. Divide array in two parts that the absolute difference between the product of left part and product of right part is minimum.

Round 5: HR round

  1. Why DE Shaw?
  2. What are your expectation with DE Shaw?
  3. She then asked me to fill a form with my CTC and expected figure.

Although I did not get an offer but it was overall a good experience.


Last Updated : 14 Nov, 2019
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