← Interview experiences
Rejected

MTS 2 at Adobe

Difficulty
Process took
3-4 Weeks
Rounds
3
Format
Remote
Applied via
Job Portal

How it went

  • Be upfront about your interests and expertise in manager rounds, don’t just “act” interested.

What they would tell you

  • Be upfront about your interests and expertise in manager rounds, don’t just “act” interested.

How to prepare

  • Get comfortable explaining your code with both pseudo code and actual code, especially data structures like heaps and cache.

Their background

I am a mid-level developer who enjoys solving system challenges and applying both backend and DevOps best practices in real projects.

Round by round

  1. 1

    DSA, System Design & Fundamentals90 min

    Interviewer asked DSA-style “medium-hard” question, finding the median in a stream of integers. I explained my approach using two heaps (priority queues), described why that works for median maintenance, then wrote the pseudo code. Then, we switched gears into rapid-fire conceptual discussions:

    • System Design: Questions on scaling, concurrency, using load balancers, and dealing with performance bottlenecks.
    • DBMS: Scenarios involving SQL vs NoSQL, different kinds of locks, concurrency control, normalization, and atomicity.
    • OS Concepts: OS-level locks, types of isolation and transaction management.
    • OOPs: LRU cache implementation in pseudo code, emphasizing design intent and efficiency. The interviewer wanted thoughtful explanations more than actual code, and the session was intense but fair.
  2. 2

    Technical Round 160 min

    The interviewer asked a lengthy but ultimately medium-level DSA question centering on backtracking with strict constraint checking. I wrote the full code, talked through my logic at every step, and debugged with his test cases. Next up was Friends of Appropriate Ages problem which I solved. After that, we had a solid chat about my exposure to DevOps:

    • Jenkins pipelines, CI/CD strategies, common build and deployment tools
    • Production troubleshooting
    • Scalable infrastructure (AWS, Docker, Kubernetes, Kafka) The round was practical and involved real-world tech talk as well as basic scripting examples.
  3. 3

    HM45 min

    The Hiring Manager round started with in-depth questions about my project experience, ownership, and the challenges I’ve faced. We discussed situations where I drove initiatives, solved problems under pressure, and took on extra responsibilities, anything that showed leadership and innovation. He revealed the role was more about release engineering and Jenkins pipelines than pure backend software development, which dampened my enthusiasm since those aren’t my core interests. Still, I engaged actively, answered technical job scheduling questions (optimal scheduling on two schedulers, handling dependencies using topological sorting), and explained why jobs with circular dependencies can't be resolved. I also clarified my limited experience building Jenkins jobs from scratch but outlined how I’d approach the learning curve.

What came up

MediumRemote4 5 years

A candidate-reported account, lightly edited. Interview processes change by team and date.

Sources