Software Engineer at Apple

How it went

What they would tell you

How to prepare

Round by round

1. 1

   Online Assessment60 min

   This round was all about coding problems. The first one was Assign Cookies, which I managed to solve completely. Then, I tackled a medium-hard dynamic programming problem. I didn’t fully finish it, but I was able to solve most of it, discussing the approach with the interviewer along the way.

   • Assign Cookies
   • One medium-hard DP problem
2. 2

   Phone Screen60 min

   This round had a good mix of hands-on problem-solving and open discussions. It started with a debugging task related to recursive sentence generation, where I had to walk through the logic and fix issues. After that, we talked about my current projects and role, which led into a few questions around REST APIs, things like how to structure them, their limitations, and some common pitfalls. The last part was more of a system design brainstorm, where I was asked how I’d go about building a transaction dashboard that could handle over a billion records.

3. 3

   Technical Round I60 min

   This round covered a wide range of Java and Spring fundamentals. Some of the key topics discussed included:

   • Spring modules, especially what Spring Web Services is used for
   • Serialization, and how it plays into data evolution
   • Exception handling, with a focus on behavior in finally blocks
   • Lambda expressions and how they work with exceptions
   • Differences between HashMap, TreeMap, and HashList
   • Concepts around immutable classes/objects, including code output predictions
   • A few code debugging questions where I had to explain the output live
4. 4

   Technical Round II60 min

   This round had a solid mix of project deep-dive, Java debugging, and a bit of DSA. We started with a discussion around my project architecture, I was asked to explain certain tech decisions, like why I chose one tool or framework over another. Then came a coding problem 3Sum Closest which I was able to handle comfortably. After that, we moved into Java exception-related debugging tasks. I was given three small code snippets to predict the output. I did well on two, but missed one tricky edge case.

   • 3Sum Closest
5. 5

   Hiring Manager60 min

   This round was a great mix of system design, project deep dive, and team fit. We had a detailed discussion around one of my past projects, with a lot of "why this approach?" kind of questions that pushed me to explain my thinking clearly. The design prompt was to build a ticketing system like BookMyShow, and we covered things like seat availability, real-time holds, and how to model it in the database. Toward the end, we spoke about why I want to join Apple, and the conversation turned more casual, the Hiring Manager had actually worked at my current company before, which made the whole interaction feel really comfortable and relatable.

What came up