Panda Guru LogoPanda
Guru

Rippling SDE 2 Interview Experience

Phone Screen Round

Questions: Given a list of transactions <from, to, amount>, settle them and return who will pay whom, how much. (Note: It did not ask for the most optimal way to settle like in Splitwise's simplify balance feature.)

Follow-up Question:

What is the most optimal way to settle the balance?

Candidate's Approach
  • Coded the solution in Java to utilize OOP principles, despite practicing DSA in C++.
  • Faced multiple compilation errors due to unfamiliarity with Java data structures.
  • Suggested sticking to one programming language for coding interviews.
  • Provided a greedy solution for the follow-up question.
Interviewer's Feedback

Feedback for this round was positive.


Hiring Manager Round

Questions:

Candidate's Approach

No approach provided.

Interviewer's Feedback

No feedback provided.


DSA Round 1

Questions: Design a Music Player analytics service with the following methods:

void playSong(songId, userId); void addSong(songId, title); void printAnalytics();

Follow-up Question:

Add a feature to star/unstar a song for a user and get the last N favorite songs played.

Candidate's Approach
  • Successfully coded the initial service.
  • Struggled to fully implement the follow-up feature due to time constraints.
Interviewer's Feedback

Verdict: weak YES.


DSA Round 2

Questions: Implement a Cache to add/get/delete key/values (both strings).

Follow-up Question:

Support transactions: BEGIN, COMMIT, ROLLBACK. Users should be able to get/delete/put during a transaction, and rollback should revert all operations.

Candidate's Approach
  • Implemented a class in C++ with relevant methods for cache operations.
  • Used a temporary map to handle transaction data and revert changes on rollback.
  • Missed two corner cases in the delete method, which the interviewer pointed out.
Interviewer's Feedback

Verdict: No. The interviewer was rude and unhelpful, making the experience challenging.


High Level Design

Questions: Design a Google News-like service that scrapes from multiple news sites. Requirements include:

Candidate's Approach

The round went well, and the interviewer was nice.

Interviewer's Feedback

Verdict: YES.


Final Verdict: After a day, received a Thank You email from the recruiter. Detailed feedback for coding rounds 1, 2, and system design was shared later.