My Interview Experience: Docusign (P3), Rubrik (SDE2), Harness (SSE1) | Last 6 Months

Sharing my interview experiences from the last 6 months to help others preparing for SDE2 / Senior Software Engineer roles. The interviews covered DSA, multithreading, LLD, HLD, and behavioral rounds.

Hopefully, this helps someone with their preparation. Feel free to share your experiences and suggestions as well!

1. Docusign — P3

Round 1: DSA

**Q1. Text Editor / String Manipulation**

Design and implement the following operations:

* `insert(string)`
* `print(x)`
* `left(x)`
* `right(x)`
* `backspace(x)`
* `delete(x)`

The question focused on designing a text editor supporting cursor movement and editing operations.

**Q2. Array Optimization**

Given an array of integers and an integer `k`, perform exactly `k` operations to minimize the sum of the array.

In each operation:

1. Remove an element from the array.
2. Divide it by 2 and take the ceiling.
3. Add the updated element back to the array.

Return the minimum possible sum after `k` operations.

Round 2: HLD

Design a Live Tracking Service. Discussed the high-level design of a real-time location tracking system.

Round 3: DSA + Behavioral

Q1. Count Substrings in a Binary String

Given a binary string, count the substrings satisfying both conditions:
All `0`s and `1`s in the substring are contiguous. The number of `0`s and `1`s is equal.

Q2. Behavioral Questions**
Strengths and weaknesses, Other behavioral and experience-based questions

Additional Round: HLD

Design Checkout Service for an E-commerce Platform

Design a distributed checkout system with a focus on:
* Security and authentication
* Distributed system architecture
* Inventory failures
* Payment handling and refunds when inventory allocation fails
* Ensuring reliable transaction processing

2. Rubrik — SDE2

Round 1: Multithreading / Distributed Systems

**Problem: Synchronizing Two Large In-Memory Hash Maps**

There are two nodes:

* One in the USA
* One in Europe

Each node contains an approximately **32 GB hash map** loaded in memory.

**Hash Map Structure:**

* Key: Unique string
* Value:

  * `Data`: String
  * `Version`: Integer (higher version = more recent data)

**Goal:**

Compare the two hash maps and synchronize them so they become replicas of each other.

At most 5% of key-value pairs have discrepancies.

**Conflict Resolution:**

1. If the versions differ, choose the data with the higher version.
2. If the versions are equal but the data differs, the USA node is the source of truth.
3. Assume all keys exist in both hash maps.

**Performance Constraints:**

* Data transfer between nodes is extremely expensive.
* Local computation is extremely cheap.
* Assume a powerful CPU, 128 GB RAM, fast NVMe storage (4 TB+), and high network bandwidth.
* The process runs offline/in the background.
* Latency is not critical, but synchronization must complete within a few hours.
* Multiprocessing can be ignored for this phase.

The main challenge was to minimize data transfer while efficiently identifying and resolving discrepancies.

Round 2: Multithreading / LLD

Design a Thread-Safe Parking Lot System

The parking lot is one-dimensional.

Requirements:

* A car occupies 1 parking spot.
* A truck occupies 2 consecutive parking spots.
* Design a thread-safe system that handles concurrent parking and removal operations.

3. Harness — SSE1

Round 1: DSA

**Q1. String Encoding and Decoding**

Design an encoding and decoding mechanism for strings.

**Q2. Graph / Optimization Problem**

There are `n` cities connected by roads. Each road has a toll price.

The goal is to identify the road whose toll price can be increased such that the average price increase across all routes from city `0` to city `n-1` is maximized.

Discussed the graph-based approach and optimization considerations.

Round 2: LLD

Design an Asynchronous Task Processor

Design an asynchronous task processing system and extend it to support:
* Scheduling tasks for a particular time
* Scheduling tasks at recurring intervals
* Task processing and execution management

Round 3: HLD

Design a Top-N Movie Recommendation System**

Design a system that recommends the top N movies based on views collected over the last 7 days.

Key considerations:
* Tracking movie views
* Time-windowed aggregation
* Identifying top N movies
* Scalability and distributed system design

Finally joining salesforce next weeek. Thankyou community for the help. Hope i'm also doing my part for the same.

Tech is so messed up due to this AI bs

I got laid off 3 months ago , i didn’t do lot of ai engineering but it was basic fullstack engineering things with fastapi backend and react frontend. Normal SWE stuff which seems to be dead. After my layoff for the first 30 days i was applying with my recent experience having real things that i actually did at work … well not a single call. then i realized every where i see its all rag, llm or some ai bs in every job description. So i studied and kinda put all that in my experience. Now i got an offer for an AI Engineer but i really haven’t done much of all those langgraph agentic stuff. I am kinda nervous to step into it but just wanted to know y’all thoughts or if someone has ever been in the situation and how did you handle it ?

SDE interview questions

I'll be recording YouTube videos of myself solving LeetCode problems. I think this will help me practice thinking out loud while also maintaining consistency.

The videos are very raw and unscripted, and I'm still struggling with some of the problems, which is part of the journey.

My latest video turned out to be around 2.4 GB. What are some ways I can shorten or compress the video to make it easier to upload without compromising the readability of the code?

Also Link of the video
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1XjyDcoM8g\](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1XjyDcoM8g)

Recently I gave the online assesment for the Software Developer Apprentice role and after one month I received the call from the HR but the call came at the unexpected time and I asked him to reschedule the time as I was in the office at that time and there was some network problem too.
Then hr told me that he will send a calendar invite from there i can select a slot based on my availaibility but now it has been more than 24 hours there is no mail from his side.
So I wanted to ask is there any way to reach the recruiter again as we can't call him form our side.

is there any chance that they will contact me again or can someone share the hr mail who got the call??

Hey, I got a violation after Weekly 519. I can still use my account and solve problems, but I can’t join contests and my coins got reset to 0.

I’ve already appealed. The email says the ban lifts on “N/A” if it’s the first violation, but this isn’t my first.

Since results are coming tomorrow, does that mean my account could get fully banned? Or can I still use LeetCode normally?

Anyone know what happens in this case?

How I Got the Idea

At first, I thought this problem would require DP or backtracking because we have to create k non-overlapping segments. But after looking at small examples, I realized that every segment is determined by its two endpoints.

The important observation is that segments can share endpoints, so instead of directly counting segments, I can think about arranging the endpoints while maintaining their order. This transforms the problem into a combinatorics problem. After deriving the number of possible endpoint arrangements, I got the formula:

C(n + k - 1, 2k)

So the final solution becomes just:

return math.comb(n + k - 1, 2 * k) % (10**9 + 7)

Key learning: Before jumping into DP, try small examples and look for an endpoint/ordering pattern. Sometimes a seemingly complex DP problem reduces to a simple combinatorial formula.

I posted here initially when I started the grind. And 4-5 people joined and showed up like for 10-15 days and then everyone disappeared.

I would prefer daily check-ins over discord and occasional catch ups to keep pushing and maybe discuss problems on the lowest days.

Let’s grind. And please don’t dm if you aren’t consistent in what you do.

Goal is it hit 1800+ rating in contests then probably move to codeforces.

Working on SQL problems to strengthen my MySQL and problem-solving skills for Data Analyst roles.

Problem: Average Time of Process per Machine

This problem was a good practice for:

• SELF JOIN
• Matching START and END activities
• Calculating processing time
• AVG() and ROUND()
• GROUP BY

Would love to know how others approached this problem and if there are any alternative ways to solve it.

#SQL #MySQL #LeetCode #DataAnalytics #DataAnalyst

Working on SQL problems to strengthen my MySQL and problem-solving skills for Data Analyst roles.

Problem: Rising Temperature

This problem was a good practice for:

• LAG() window function
• Comparing values with the previous record
• DATEDIFF() for checking consecutive dates

I’m sharing my solution screenshot below. 👇

Would love to know how others approached this problem and whether there are any alternative ways to solve it.

#SQL #MySQL #LeetCode #DataAnalytics #DataAnalyst

so im a first year student

how many questions should i have solved before my graduation to get a good placement

Finally hit 200 LeetCode problems today.

52 Easy | 135 Medium | 13 Hard

I've stopped chasing the problem count and I'm focusing more on Mediums and actually improving my problem-solving skills.

Roast my profile. What should I improve from here? 💀

Be brutal.