Toppr Interview Experience | Off Campus for SDE Backend

I applied in October 2019 through Employee Referral. The process for me consisted of 2 Technical Interviews, followed by a Technical+Managerial Round taken by their CTO. All the rounds were Telephonic, which can prove to be a disadvantage sometimes ( as in my case ) in case you’re not able to explain something properly on phone.

Round 1: Technical Interview ( Taken By a Senior Developer )

The interviewer started off with a formal introduction and asked me for the same. The interviewer then asked me about the projects I had done. Since the project was based on Deep Learning, he asked me for a complete pipeline description. Then he followed it up with the following questions –

1. Maximum Overlapping Intervals – Explanation + Code
2. Subset Sum Problem – Explanation + Code
3. Database Normalization with Example
4. ACID Properties
5. Given a Table. Normalize it to the lowest possible Normal Form.

I was familiar with most of the concepts asked in this round. So, I answered all the questions very comfortably, and the interviewer was very satisfied as well.

Round 2: Technical Interview ( Taken by Toppr’s VP of Engineering)

The interviewer started off with a formal introduction again, followed by a Project Description.

He followed it up with the following questions –

1. Given a Table – Users, with the following properties – ID, FirstName, LastName.                                                     How would you speed up the following query? ( HINT – Try to use Indexing )

SELECT FirstName, LastName FROM Users WHERE FirstName=’x’ AND LastName = ‘y’

1. What are Tries and where are they used?
2. Maximum Overlapping Intervals
3. Prefix Search using Tries
4. Pattern Searching in a String using Tries ( Just Like the Search Bar Feature )
5. Suffix Tree
6. Database Normalization

This round went pretty average as I was not able to explain the Pattern Searching using Tries to the interviewer.

Round 3: Technical Cum Managerial Round – ( Taken by the CTO )

This round was very short, lasted for about 15-20 mins. The interviewer started off with a formal introduction and then moved on to a few questions on Tries again. The HR had told me that this round was going to be managerial, but to my surprise, the same questions that I failed to answer in the last round were repeated and again, this round went pretty average. Apart from the Tries, the interviewer focused on Database Normalisation again. I managed to answer the questions related to Normalisation but terribly failed to explain the Tries Search. The interviewer then asked me to wait for 2-3 days for the Final Result.

I got selected and will be joining Toppr in May 2020.