Schrodinger
Experienced
No formal criteria, prior Java/Spring Boot experience preferred (30-40 LPA)
Application Process
A recruiter found my profile on LinkedIn (I've curated it to highlight my skills/experience/achievements). She checked my interest, I shared my resume, and after 2-3 days she told me I was shortlisted; she explained there'd be ~4-5 rounds, ending with an on-site in Hyderabad.
Interview Rounds (2)
Detailed breakdown of each evaluation round, problems encountered, and round takeaways.
Video Call
Questions & Problems Asked (2)
Problem: Project Discussion
the interviewer cross-questioned my tech stack choices (MongoDB vs PostgreSQL, RabbitMQ vs Kafka/SQS). My tip: be structured with trade-offs and know every project on my resume thoroughly.
Problem: Database Concepts
isolation levels, optimistic vs pessimistic locking for banking transactions, deadlocks with a real-life example, what @Transactional does. My tip: know multithreading, concurrency, and locking well.
Video Call
Questions & Problems Asked (1)
Problem: Minimum Number Of Taps To Water Garden
I converted taps to intervals, sorted by end time, and tried activity-selection logic, but this is actually an interval-covering problem so some test cases failed; I ran out of time to fix it.
Round Experience
My selection perspective: I was well prepared for system design given my day job, but my DSA prep wasn't as thorough -- I couldn't fully solve the DP problem.
Round 2 — My Takeaways
- DSA thoroughly, aptitude/puzzles, two good explained projects, arrays/binary search/DP/recursion, common HR questions.
Resume Tips
Bullet-point projects with quantified impact.
Only mention skills I'm confident in.
Preparation Tips
Prepare DP well.
Prepare isolation/locking concepts (optimistic vs pessimistic) with real use cases.
For SDE-2+, prepare system design trade-offs (SQL vs NoSQL, Kafka vs RabbitMQ).
