TripActions (Navan) Interview Experience : Senior Software Backend Engineer, Amsterdam 2022

As someone who recently went through a job interview process for a software engineering position, I wanted to share my experience. The process consisted of five rounds of interviews, each assessing different aspects of my skills and knowledge.

The first round was a call with a recruiter, who asked me about my willingness to relocate and whether I had worked on large-scale distributed systems before. It was a brief conversation to get an idea of my general background.

The second round was a technical interview with one of the backend engineers, who asked me a Leetcode medium-level question to assess my data structure and algorithm skills. I had to explain my thought process and come up with an optimal solution.

The third round was a code design round, where I was asked to write production-ready code for an event management system. It felt more like a discussion, as I had to provide APIs, request and response models for each API, and explain my choices.

The fourth round was a system design round, where I was asked to design an API rate limiter. I discussed various approaches like token-based, leaky bucket, and other rate limiting algorithms. The interviewer was interested in my ability to reason about trade-offs and choose the best solution for the specific use case.

The fifth and last round was with the VP of Engineering, who assessed my values and culture fit. We had a conversation about my work philosophy and what kind of environment I thrive in.

Overall, I found the interview process to be challenging but fair. It covered a wide range of topics and skills, and it gave me a good sense of what the company was looking for in a candidate. I appreciated the opportunity to showcase my expertise and to learn from the interviewers' feedback. If you are preparing for a similar interview process, I recommend focusing on your problem-solving skills, communication, and cultural fit.