Tuesday, March 26, 2024

Software Engineer Design Interview Questions

Don't Miss

How Is Horizontal Scaling Different From Vertical Scaling

Systems Design Interview Concepts (for software engineers / full-stack web)
  • Horizontal scaling refers to the addition of more computing machines to the network that shares the processing and memory workload across a distributed network of devices. In simple words, more instances of servers are added to the existing pool and the traffic load is distributed across these devices in an efficient manner.
  • Vertical scaling refers to the concept of upgrading the resource capacity such as increasing RAM, adding efficient processors etc of a single machine or switching to a new machine with more capacity. The capability of the server can be enhanced without the need for code manipulation.

This has been demonstrated in the image below:

Horizontal scaling vs. Vertical scaling:

Category
Follows ACID properties. Follows BASE properties.

Check out more differences here.

Programming Questions On Searching And Sorting

23) Write a program to sort numbers in place using quick sort? 24) Write a program to implement a binary search algorithm in Java or C++? 25) How do you sort Java objects using a Comparator? 26) Write code to implement Insertion Sort in Java?27) Write code to implement Bubble Sort in Java?Algorithm Design Manual by Steven Skiena

Faqs On Software Engineering Manager Interview Questions

In this section, weâll look at some FAQs on Software Engineering Manager interview questions.

Q1. What are the different types of software engineering manager interview questions asked at technical interviews?

Interview questions for software engineering managers are primarily based on coding, distributed systems design, and behavioral psychology.

Q2. How many interview rounds do software engineering manager interviews at FAANG+ companies have?

Engineering manager interviews at FAANG+ companies consist of three main rounds of interviews: The Initial Recruiter Screen, which involves interacting with a recruiter from human resources The Technical Phone Screen, which involves solving 1-2 coding problems and The On-site interview, which consists of coding, design and behavioral rounds. For more details, .

Q3. How many rounds of interviews does the software engineering manager on-site interview have?

While this might be different at different companies, the on-site interview for Software Engineering Managers generally consists of one coding round, two systems design rounds, and one leadership interview.

Q4. How many coding questions can you expect at a software engineering manager interview?

At engineering manager interviews, you can expect 2-3 questions on coding. You can expect 1-2 problems in the Technical Phone Screen round and 1-2 problems in the on-site round.

Q5. What type of behavioral psychology questions are asked at software engineering manager interviews?

Don’t Miss: How To Prepare For A Substitute Teacher Interview

What Approaches Do You Use To Handle Deadlines That Might Be Brought Forward Or Changed

Since many projects can be considered time-sensitive, take note of candidates who show they can quickly respond to a deadline change.

At the same time, they should also show how theyd maintain the quality of the code, seek support or advice from team members to meet the deadline, and also assess the teams limits and mitigate the risk of burnout.

How Do You Answer System Design Interview Questions

Software Engineer System Design Interview Questions
  • Ask questions to the interviewer for clarification: Since the questions are purposefully vague, it is advised to ask relevant questions to the interviewer to ensure that both you and the interviewer are on the same page. Asking questions also shows that you care about the customer requirements.
  • Gather the requirements: List all the features that are required, what are the common problems and system performance parameters that are expected by the system to handle. This step helps the interviewer to see how well you plan, expect problems and come up with solutions to each of them. Every choice matters while designing a system. For every choice, at least one pros and cons of the system needs to be listed.
  • Come up with a design: Come up with a high-level design and low-level design solutions for each of the requirements decided. Discuss the pros and cons of the design. Also, discuss how they are beneficial to the business.

The primary objective of system design interviews is to evaluate how well a developer can plan, prioritize, evaluate various options to choose the best possible solution for a given problem.

Read Also: Best Common Interview Questions And Answers

What Are The Limitations Of Inheritance

Ans. Following are the limitations of inheritance:

  • It is time-consuming because it needs to navigate through multiple classes for implementation.
  • The child class and the base class are tightly packed, which makes it difficult to make changes.
  • It is complex when it comes to implementation, which may result in errors if not implemented correctly.

How Do You Design Youtube

Designing a YouTube is an interesting System design question as everyone is familiar with YouTube but a lot goes to design a video streaming service like YouTube. There are a lot of challenges related to storing data, indexing data, and providing streaming service.

Scalability is another major challenge as it needs to be fast and should be able to support millions of users. You can start designing YouTube on your own but if you stuck or need guidance you can see this free tutorial by Alex Xu from his popular System Design Interview Course on ByteByteGo.

Here is a nice flow diagram to explain video upload process:

Don’t Miss: What Questions To Ask When Interviewing Someone

Could You Please Describe What The Software Development Life Cycle Is And Why It Is Important

The Software Development Life Cycle is a technique used by programming teams to create high-quality software in a short amount of time. It provides precise procedures for effectively developing, launching, and maintaining software.

The SDLC typically consists of seven phases: planning, requirements, design, software development, testing, deployment, and maintenance. The phases, however, are determined by the approach used by the team. The steps, for example, differ depending on whether the methodology is Waterfall or Agile.

How Do You Refactor Classes For Easier Unit Testing

10 System Design Interview Questions You’re Likely to be Asked (and How to Answer Them)

The interviewer may want to get an idea of how you make decisions early in the design process that reduce technical debts and improve the functionality of software products for clients. Use your answer to highlight your ability to deconstruct multiple classes into different groupings and responsibilities for team members to incorporate into a project.

Example:”One of my first designs as a senior engineer integrated refactored classes. The company I worked for at the time relied on one large system framework to perform multiple subtests for various financial processes and calculations. I determined this design impeded the implementation of new features when I wanted to update the software code as the company increased its client base. By refactoring the single class into smaller classes, I reduced the technical debt my team managed while performing unit testing on design updates.”

Related:Software Engineer Manager Interview Questions

Don’t Miss: What Questions Do They Ask You At A Job Interview

Top 10 System Design Interview Questions And Answers

In the software engineering interview process system design round has become a standard part of the interview. If you want to get your dream job in some big tech giant companies then you need to tell your approach to build a complex large scalable system. There is no standard or accurate answer to the design interview questions.

You may have different conversations with different interviewers. Due to the lack of experience in building a large-scale system and the open-ended nature of the system design round a lot of candidates struggle with this round. Not just junior and mid-level developers but also experienced developers feel uncomfortable in the system design round. If you are preparing yourself for this round then we recommend you to read the blog How to Crack System Design Round in Interviews. Along with this, if you also want to crack Architect, SDM, SDE, and SSE jobs then you can check out the System Design Live course and optimize your approach towards getting an amazing job.

We will discuss some common design interview questions asked by the interviewers frequently in big tech companies. We will also discuss some key points, that you should consider while designing the system and explaining the answer to the interviewer.

Section : System Availability

Software engineers aim to build systems that are reliable. A reliable system is one that consistently satisfies a users needs, whenever that user seeks to have that need satisfied. A key component of that reliability is Availability.

Its helpful to think of availability as the resiliency of a system. If a system is robust enough to handle failures in the network, database, servers etc, then it can generally be considered to be a fault-tolerant system which makes it an available system.

Of course, a system is a sum of its parts in many senses, and each part needs to be highly available if availability is relevant to the end user experience of the site or app.

Recommended Reading: How To Thank An Employer For An Interview

You May Like: Java Basic Concepts For Interview

Behavioral Programming Interview Questions How Do You Fit Their Culture

By asking so-called behavioral questions during your programming interview, theyre trying to figure out if your personality will fit their companys culture.

If youre arrogant, you get argumentative and defensive quickly when someone criticizes you, or you start blaming others, theyll take that as a reason to reject you for the job.

Soft skills software developer questions study them!

Though most of your programming interview will be about your coding skills & analytical ability its well worth your time to prepare for these softer questions. Recruiters will probably ask you about some of the points in your resume as well. So it makes sense to be ready for that, too.

Quick Tip: In our article on soft skills for programmers, we go much deeper into the behavioral attributes you need to succeed in programming interviews and generally, your career.

The Top 7 Behavioral & Soft Skills Programming Interview Questions

98. What are your weaknesses?

Answer

When theyre asking about your weaknesses, give them an actual weakness of yours! Dont give another strength of yours, disguised as a weakness.

This would make them think youre arrogant or egotistical.

Rather, be honest about a weakness you have but then show them how youre working to overcome that weakness.

99. Whats a recent technical challenge youve faced and how did you solve it?

Answer

Theyre judging your process here.

Prepare a situation you had, in which you solved a problem through a process.

Answer

What Are The Major Components Used In Designing A Web Crawler

Software Engineer Interview Questions [Video]

The primary function of a web crawler is to enhance Google search results by crawling and indexing page links. Storage systems and APIs are mandatory components of designing a web crawler. Also, we have to assess various things: how to find new web pages and how to prioritise web pages. Check this video link to get details.

Also Check: How To Conduct A Job Interview As An Employer

How Do You Prepare For A Twitter Interview

It is critical that you tailor your resume and cover letter to the position you are applying for in order to give your resume and cover letter a strong professional impression. Fill out the job description with keywords that might pique the interest of potential employers. If you want to ask questions about cultural fit, you should be familiar with Twitter and their history.

Before applying for a job at Twitter, you do not need to be fluent in a specific programming language. You should have a basic understanding of the syntax of your preferred programming language, such as Java, Python, C#, C/C, and so on. The interviews will last about seven to eight hours and will test your algorithms, data structures, and behavioral abilities. By studying Twitters core values and mission, you will be able to answer a wide range of questions. If you do not receive an offer, you will most likely have to wait six months to a year before reapplying.

Design Facebooks Newsfeed System

Facebooks newsfeed allows users to see what is happening in their friend’s circle, liked pages and groups followed.

  • What are some of the Required Features?
  • Generate newsfeed using posts from other system entities that the user follows.
  • Newsfeed posts can be of text, image, audio or video format.
  • Append new posts to the users newsfeed in close to real-time.
  • What are some of the Common Problems encountered?
  • What happens if the new post sees a lot of latency to get appended to the news feed?
  • Can the algorithm handle sudden user load?
  • What posts should take priority for displaying in the news feed?
  • Possible tips for consideration:
  • Evaluate the process of fanout for publishing posts to the followers
  • Check how sharding can be achieved efficiently for handling heavy user load. The feed data of a user shouldn’t be put into multiple servers. Instead, sharding can be done on user ids.
  • Read Also: What To Wear To A Cna Interview

    Assume You Have A Brilliant Concept For A Significant Software Project In Which You Are Not Personally Engaged How Would You React

    This inquiry might assist you in screening for both communication and collaboration abilities. Would they find the appropriate project personnel and meet with them privately to discuss their idea? Would they be bitter if they didn’t get recognition, or would they be content to assist their teammates in succeeding? You may extend this topic by asking what they would do if their concept was rejected.

    How Would You Design A Web Cache

    Google Software Engineer Design Interview: Reservation System

    A distributed web cache is key to many systems, so that the RAM of multiple machines can be accessed in a single in-memory store quickly and reliably. Lets look at some general points that should help you build out a design.

    Ask clarifying questions

    • Consider the functional and non-functional requirements: put , get , scalability, availability, performance, etc.
    • Specify your assumptions: can we assume that put and get are strings?

    Design high-level

    • Possible data structures for storing data: hash table, queues, doubly linked list
    • Consider different options to distribute the cache, as well as the benefits of each

    Drill down on your design

    • Identify the tradeoffs of your choices: Maximum hash table size will prevent from adding more elements, shards may become hot , etc.
    • Data replication could help with hot shard bottleneck

    Bring it all together

    • Is the system youve designed fast, highly scalable, and available?

    For a full answer to this question, take a look at the video guide below from System Design Interview.

    You May Like: How To Prepare For Amazon Coding Interview

    How Does Turing Help You To Hire Your Perfect Senior Software Engineer

    Turing offers world-class services and helps organizations hire remote developers from a vast talent pool of over 2 million experts from 150 countries. All developers are subjected to a thorough vetting procedure to ensure that only the finest of the best are chosen. Turing allows you to connect with developers seamlessly and effectively transparency is critical to this.

    Turing’s AI-powered Intelligent Talent Cloud will match your firm with the best offshore developers. Hire bright and qualified remote engineering workers to capitalize on the benefits of a remote-first world.

    Join the 300+ companies who trust Turing to hire the best remote senior software engineers within 3-5 days and unlock the world’s untapped human potential!

    During And Post Interview

    Take notes during the interview on how the candidate replies to the questions. What impression did you get of the candidate during the interview?

    After the interview, inform the applicant that they will be called for more rounds or the next steps in your companys recruiting process. Also, while the interview is still fresh in your mind, reviewing and comparing notes with the other interviewers or hiring managers is a good idea.

    Let us now move on to the crucial senior software engineer interview questions.

    Also Check: Where Can I Watch Kardashian Interview

    What Do You Understand By Leader Election

    In a distributed environment where there are multiple servers contributing to the availability of the application, there can be situations where only one server has to take lead for updating third party APIs as different servers could cause problems while using the third party APIs. This server is called the primary server and the process of choosing this server is called leader election. The servers in the distributed environment have to detect when the leader server has failed and appoint another one to become a leader. This process is most suitable in high availability and strong consistency based applications by using a consensus algorithm.

    The Different Types Of Interview I Encountered

    21 Essential JavaScript Interview Questions

    If you prepare and perform well enough in the preliminary phone screens, youll be given the opportunity to come on site and conduct full days worth of interviews. These interviews will typically last four to six hours depending on the company for which youre interviewing with.

    During my trip to Silicon Valley, I managed to line up seven on-site interviews in total. This gave me a unique perspective of the current landscape for interviewing.

    Typically, an on-site will cover three main subjects: algorithm, architecture design, and behavioral, which is what I had studied and prepared for. However, there are some companies which seem to be bucking this trend and expanding their interviews to cover more practical skills.

    Ill briefly go over each of the topics I encountered.

    Algorithm Interviews

    The most common type of interview you will encounter. The interviewer will ask you to solve a problem on a whiteboard which will assess your knowledge of data structures, sorting algorithms, recursion, time/space complexity analysis as well as pattern and edge-case recognition. In this interview, you will most typically come up with a brute-force solution, and then try to improve upon that solution and discuss the tradeoffs, if there are any, with the different solutions you propose.

    Architecture Design Interviews

    Behavioral Interviews

    Culture Fit

    Pair Programming

    Finding and Patching Bugs

    Testing Domain Knowledge

    Understanding Operating Systems

    Also Check: How To Schedule An Interview Email

    More articles

    Popular Articles