RejectedSoftware Development Engineer 2 at Quince
- Difficulty
- Process took
- 1-2 Weeks
- Rounds
- 3
- Format
- Remote
- Applied via
- Referral
How it went
- You’ll get better with each attempt-Looking back, every interview I’ve done—hits or misses—has helped me improve. Don’t be too hard on yourself if things don’t work out. There’s always another opportunity.
- Don’t try to “sound smart.” Just be honest, curious, and open. If you make a mistake, own it, explain it, and show how you’d fix it
What they would tell you
- You’ll get better with each attempt-Looking back, every interview I’ve done—hits or misses—has helped me improve. Don’t be too hard on yourself if things don’t work out. There’s always another opportunity.
- Don’t try to “sound smart.” Just be honest, curious, and open. If you make a mistake, own it, explain it, and show how you’d fix it
How to prepare
- Don’t skip the LLD and concurrency practice. Honestly, I wish I had spent more time on these topics before my interview.
Their background
My background is primarily in Java and Python, and I have hands-on experience with microservices and event-driven architecture.
Round by round
- 1
Screening60 min
The process kicked off with a screening round conducted by HireHunch. It started with a general coding problem, nothing too tricky, but it set the tone. After that, the conversation veered into a high-level discussion of a low-level design (LLD) problem. Honestly, the exact problems escape me now, and the interviewer was mostly interested in seeing how I structured my thoughts rather than getting a perfect answer right away.
- 2
DSA60 min
For this round, there were two coding questions, one easy and one classic medium. The first problem was about analyzing a 2D array to count something around “towers”, it felt a bit like a grid traversal with some logic on top. While the concept was straightforward, the interviewer seemed to care a lot about clean, readable code and edge cases. The second question was a bit harder but instantly familiar: finding the length of the longest substring without repeating characters. I’d practiced variations of this before, so I talked through my approach, using a sliding window and hash map, and got to code a working solution. We discussed space and time complexity, and the feedback was positive.
- 3
Low-Level Design60 min
LLD round, focusing on designing an elevator system. I was given a pretty detailed problem statement about handling both internal and external requests. The tricky part was figuring out how to efficiently manage and prioritize these requests. I stumbled early by picking the wrong data structure for the request queue, the interviewer noticed right away and gave a subtle hint. Once I corrected course, I was able to model a more logical flow for request management. Next, I had to actually implement the elevator’s moving strategy, deciding which direction the elevator should move and how to handle multiple, potentially conflicting requests. I got some more hints as I went, but by the end, I had a working (though not perfect) piece of code. The interviewer seemed satisfied with the approach, but I knew I could have done better with clearer initial assumptions.
What came up
A candidate-reported account, lightly edited. Interview processes change by team and date.
Sources
Hiring now
Quince has 52 open roles right now
landed applies to roles like these for you, on each company’s own site, with answers written for the role.
Software Development Engineer III (Mobile)
Bengaluru, Karnataka, India
Software Engineer III, Frontend (Storefront)
Palo Alto, California, United States
10 free auto-applies. No card.
Or practice this interview first