Got the offerSoftware Engineer 1 at Visa
- Difficulty
- Process took
- 2-3 Weeks
- Rounds
- 4
- Format
- Remote
- Applied via
- Company Website
How it went
- One thing to always keep in mind: interviewers listen more than they talk. So keep talking, share your thoughts, ask clarifying questions, talk through edge cases. Silence can feel scary, but it’s your chance to lead the conversation.
- And don’t wait to be asked about optimization, bring it up yourself if time permits. It shows you care about quality and efficiency, not just “getting it done.”
What they would tell you
- One thing to always keep in mind: interviewers listen more than they talk. So keep talking, share your thoughts, ask clarifying questions, talk through edge cases. Silence can feel scary, but it’s your chance to lead the conversation.
- And don’t wait to be asked about optimization, bring it up yourself if time permits. It shows you care about quality and efficiency, not just “getting it done.”
How to prepare
- When I was prepping for Visa’s SDE-1 role, what really made a difference was getting comfortable with graphs, not just coding them, but actually thinking about how to represent problems as graphs.Cycle detection, path reconstruction, these are not just academic problems; they show how you model real-world situations.
- Also, their online test starts easy but ramps up quickly, so pacing yourself is key. Don’t rush through the easy ones make sure you write clean code and explain your thinking clearly. When you hit those harder questions, it’s okay if you don’t finish perfectly, focus on showing a strong approach and discussing improvements.
- For the behavioral round, don’t try to over-rehearse. Just be honest about where you’ve grown, what mistakes taught you, and where you want to head.
Round by round
- 1
Online Coding Assessment90 min
The first round was a timed online coding test on Codesignal with four questions. The structure was designed to gradually increase in difficulty:
- Q1 and Q2 were easy-level, usually covering basics of strings, arrays, or number operations.
- Q3 leaned towards medium to hard, testing implementation logic and corner case handling.
- Q4 was a hard-level problem that required optimization and deeper problem-solving under time pressure.
- 2
Technical Interview 160 min
The interviewer started with a quick intro and then gave a unique graph-based question You are given a list of strings. You need to construct a graph where the last character of a string connects to another string starting with that character. Goal: Detect if there's a cycle in the constructed graph. Example: Input: ["abc", "def", "cfg", "gza"] Connections: abc → cfg, cfg → gza, etc. I modeled the problem using adjacency lists and implemented cycle detection using DFS. Also explained handling disconnected components and edge cases clearly.
- 3
Technical Interview 260 min
This was a continuation of the second round and tested real-world graph reasoning. Question Asked: You’re given a set of city-to-city routes in the form of source → destination mappings. Example Input: "Mumbai" → "Bangalore" "Goa" → "Dehradun" "Calcutta" → "Mumbai" "Dehradun" → "Calcutta" Task: Reconstruct the full path and identify the true source city such that the route visits all given cities in a valid order. Expected Output: Goa → Dehradun → Calcutta → Mumbai → Bangalore My Approach:
- Initially proposed a graph traversal using DFS
- Discussed alternate approach using a HashSet to track unique sources/destinations
- The interviewer appreciated the graph modeling, and we also talked through edge cases
- 4
Hiring Manager Round45 min
Basic self-introduction and resume walkthrough Asked standard behavioral questions like:
- “Why Visa?”
- “Tell me about a time you made a mistake and learned from it”
- “How do you plan to grow in your career?” The manager seemed to focus on mindset, learning curve, and whether I was looking to improve and upskill
What came up
A candidate-reported account, lightly edited. Interview processes change by team and date.