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Rejected

SSE at Freshwoks

Difficulty
Process took
2-3 Weeks
Rounds
4
Format
Remote
Applied via
Company Website

How it went

  • Separate system design thinking from DSA mindset, don’t over-optimize as if it were a coding problem.

What they would tell you

  • Separate system design thinking from DSA mindset, don’t over-optimize as if it were a coding problem.

How to prepare

  • Strong DSA fundamentals with focus on optimization and edge cases

Their background

My complete experience with Freshworks for Senior Software Engineer (IC2) position, The process covered multiple dimensions from coding fundamentals to system design and behavioral assessment

Round by round

  1. 1

    DSA Round 160 min

    The problem asked me to find the next greater element for each element in a circular array. Since the array is circular, after reaching the end, we can continue searching from the beginning, i used a monotonic stack data structure to solve this Next problem required rotating array by K positions

  2. 2

    DSA Round 260 min

    It started with introductions and questions about my current project's architecture Questions:

    1. Count Sub Islands A challenging grid-based problem. Given two binary grids (land and water), I needed to count how many islands in grid2 are sub-islands of grid1. An island in grid2 is a sub-island only if every cell of that island corresponds to land in grid1 at the same position
    2. Distributed Rate Limiter Design This was based on something I had implemented in my previous project, so I was comfortable discussing it. I explained how I built a rate limiter using Redis, discussed multiple rate limiting algorithms and their trade-offs
  3. 3

    High-Level Design Round60 min

    Design Problem: Multi-Tenant File Sharing System The problem was to design a cloud-based file sharing application where multiple users from different organizations can upload, share, and access files securely Requirements included:

    • Role-based access control (admin, editor, viewer)
    • Versioning of files and rollback capability
    • Handling concurrent uploads/downloads efficiently
    • Supporting large file sizes (multi-GB) and high request throughput During the discussion, I explained my approach, how I would handle large-scale traffic, interviewer was friendly and encouraged me to ask questions
  4. 4

    Hiring Manager Round40 min

    Questions covered:

    • Examples of taking ownership beyond my immediate responsibilities
    • How I mentor junior engineers and contribute to team growth
    • Why I wanted to join Freshworks and what I was looking for in my next role

What came up

MediumRemote5+ years

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

Sources