Oracle OCI SDE-2 Interview Experience — offer :)
Hi Everyone,
Here is my another interview experience in one of the product based company which recently entered in the cloud market few years ago but made a huge impact on customers.
Oracle has put huge bet on cloud, Oracle cloud infrastructure department is primarily responsible for any Oracle cloud related offerings. Recently it’s in boom in the market due to high package offering to candidates and good work life balance.
How I got an opportunity :
I got an opportunity through linked-In, so basically I have applied for SDE positions few months back but didn’t received any immediate response at that point of time. Just after 2 months, I got a call from HR that there is an opening in OCI for SDE2 and if I would like to go through JD ( job description ).
After going through JD, as I was prepared for the interview I responded back to schedule the rounds in the same week.
NOTE : All Interview solutions asked in rounds has to be compiled on online compiler and test cases has to be passed against it.
[that’s make an interview a bit tougher. Where Candidate has to write working solution which has to run again test cases.]
Round 1:
The first round taken by SDE-2 interviewer. It was a technical round based on DS algorithms. He started with asking basic OOPs concept about inheritance and data encapsulation.
Later he gave me a problem to print number which has exact 3 divisor from given array, which is something similar to this : https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/numbers-exactly-3-divisors/
I came up with solution after trying multiple test cases within 5 mins. After discussing the approach with him he agreed with the approach I suggested then I jumped to writing code for this.
As mentioned in the above note I have to write working code because the interviewer was supposed to compile and run it.
I tried to cover possible edge cases in my code before submitting the solution. I was quite happy that it ran in first go ( Just had to remove few print statements for my debugging purpose 😛 ). Interviewer also seemed quite happy with the proper code.
As 30 mins were left, we jumped to another question I couldn’t recall proper question now but it was related to hashing and linked-List.
He was quite satisfied with the approach and I wrote a working code for the problem.
Overall experience was positive for the round.
Round 2:
Second round was also about Data structure and algorithms. This round was taken by senior engineer of Oracle. She asked me about my work and projects, later on she asked about Connection Pooling Mechanism in depth.
Later she gave me problem to find max sum from an array of integers where twist was to not choose any adjacent elements. Here is problem link : https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/maximum-sum-such-that-no-two-elements-are-adjacent/
I tried multiple test cases and discussed approach with the Interviewer. At first, she agreed with brute force approach but later on she asked me to optimise it. I optimised the approach using dynamic programming. I felt quite happy after submitting my code to her which was passing for almost all edge cases as well.
She also seemed positive about how I explained code and wrote solution.
Later in last 10 mins she asked some couple of questions based on Oracle Principles which were some situation based questions asked like “tell me a scenario where you go beyond for your customers” and etc …
These are very common questions but tricky one. I answered based on my experience.
Tip : Always give examples from your own experience only. Don’t try to narrate story. Always follow the STAR (Situation, Task, Action , Result ) pattern to answer your perspective.
Round 3:
It was also Problem solving round. The interviewer was quite interactive from the beginning. He Introduced himself and told me what he expects from me in the interview.
Later, I introduced myself and my work in the current company. Later the round became interesting when he asked me which domain I want to pick for interview? He has given me two choices whether I want to solve some Data-Base Queries or Algorithmic questions.
Well that was quite new to me that interviewer himself asked me to choose domain. As I feel comfortable enough at Algorithms side so I chose that one.
He gave me Problem related to matrix where multiple gates (Entry points) were given and I have to fill matrix with shortest distance possible from each gate.
Didn’t find the exact question he asked but somewhat related to this : https://www.techiedelight.com/find-shortest-path-source-destination-matrix-satisfies-given-constraints/
It was good discussion on the approach around 20–25 mins. Later He told me to optimise the approach. Which I did.
He told me to write code for this. I tried to write code which run for 3 of the cases out of 5 cases.
Later he gave me 5 mins extra to handle those cases as well. He was quite impressed with the neat and readable code.
He asked me some of the question on Oracle principles as well, Based on my experience I have answered those.
Overall my experience was positive about the round.
Round 4 :
It was Hiring manager + design round as well.
Firstly, My hiring manager explained me about the work and projects they are doing in oracle, also asked me few questions about my org to see where I stand in the cloud domain.
Later he gave me a problem to design Food delivery system. I need to design HLD ( high level design) with APIs. which was around 30 mins discussion on all the modules and then he told me to write API for one of the module.
I explained him well about my thought process and designed those APIs.
Overall It was quite good round involved good discussions on approach.
Tip : In design rounds keep your communication good to show your thought process to interviewer, it is also called think out loud. Always explain with justification too, to show why you were thinking like that. it will help the interviewer and you to be in sync.
Round 5 :
In this round, I got news that I am selected for the Role but offer will be processed after this round which is called Bar raiser or Bar tender Round.
This round usually happens to see if candidate fits in the team or not. It was taken by some other team’s member ( not from the current team).
In starting he Introduced himself and told me about the round and expectations as well.
He started with digging my resume, asked questions on the Api-gateway structure, Microservices, Docker and Kubernetes.
Most of the questions were on design side like what optimizations I did in the service and how more I can scale it. Some of the questions were on Istio service mesh side as well.
He gave me a sample problem on permutations at the end, which I couldn’t recall right now ( I don’t have to write code for this, just wanted to know my approach to solve this )
Overall he seems positive as I answered most of the questions correctly.
Result :
After 2–3 days later of all interview rounds. I got call from the HR that they are ready to make an offer for me after reviewing my Interview performance.
Well Overall it was quite good experience to solve new problems.
Best of Luck for your next interview process 😉
FAQs :
- Read my Nvidia Interview Experience here ( offer ) : https://medium.com/@dadhichhardik26/nvidia-sde-2-interview-experience-offer-41d79116d478
- Read my Amazon Interview Experience here (offer) : https://medium.com/@dadhichhardik26/amazon-sde-2-interview-experience-offer-fbb3e4ae592c
- LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/in/hardik-dadhich-4b6003113/
And All the best for your next interviews.
cheers : 🥂
