Software Development Engineer II at Groww

How it went

What they would tell you

How to prepare

Their background

Round by round

1. 1

   Data Structures & Algorithms60 min

   Construct string with repeat limit, this one about rearranging a string so no character appears too many times in a row. I started by explaining a greedy approach. and other one, Longest substring with at most k distinct characters, I described how to use a sliding window and a hashmap to keep track of character counts, then adjusted the window based on distinct characters observed. Solved both questions

   • Longest Substring With At Most K Distinct Characters
2. 2

   Machine Coding120 min

   Task was to Build Splitwise app Track expenses between users, create balances, and settle up. Implementation: I broke down the problem into core components:

   • Users and Groups - Created classes for users and groups, with methods to add, remove, and update members.
   • Expenses - Added expense records, allowed splitting bills equally or by custom amounts.
   • Balances - Computed who owes whom what, with methods to settle up (show all outstanding balances).
   • Testing - Wrote a main class with multiple test cases, happy paths, edge cases, and invalid inputs.
3. 3

   HLD60 min

   Design a system to migrate and aggregate stock candle (OHLCV) data from cache to SQL storage. Discussion: Data Flow: Considered real-time vs. batch processing, and how to minimize downtime during migration. Scaling: Talked about sharding the data, handling sudden spikes (like during market hours), and graceful degradation. Consistency: Discussed eventual vs. strong consistency, idempotency (so retries don’t create duplicates), and how to handle partial failures. Trade-offs: Weighed the pros/cons of in-memory caches (Redis, Memcached) vs. persistent storage, and how to backfill missing or corrupt data. Monitoring: Suggested logging, metrics, and alerting for ETL health.

4. 4

   Hiring Manager60 min

   This round started with a design challenge, I was asked to architect a notification system that supports multiple delivery channels (email, SMS, in-app), handles priority-based delivery, and scales to millions of users. Cultural Fit: The interviewer asked about my experience with team collaboration and conflict resolution, also discussed my previous experience in navigating conflicts and how I approach teamwork in challenging situations.

5. 5

   HR60 min

   The final round was with HR and focused on both practical and personal alignment. We discussed my compensation expectations, relocation preferences, and notice periodin detail. Beyond logistics, the conversation touched on my career aspirations and how well they align with Groww’s mission and culture. The HR was particularly interested in understanding my motivation for joining Groww, and whether I’d be comfortable relocating to Bengaluru.

What came up