Backend Engineer · Full Journey · Multiple Types

American Express — Backend Engineer ✅ Passed

Level: Senior-Level

Round: Full Journey · Type: Multiple Types · Difficulty: 3/10 · Duration: 180 min · Interviewer: Neutral

Topics: React, JavaScript, Java Garbage Collection, Linked List, Priority Queue, Data Structures, Algorithms, Behavioral Questions

Location: New York, NY, US

Interview date: 2020-05-15

Summary

Interview Rounds Overview

• Round 1: Online Assessment
• Round 2: Behavioral (BQ)
• Round 3: Technical Phone Screen

Details

My interview experience for a full-stack backend role with 2 years of experience. I was applying for an entry-level III position.

Online Assessment: I had three questions with 85 minutes to complete them. The questions were relatively simple:

1. Write a React button component that increments its own count.
2. Given a series of coin flips, what is the minimum number of flips to get either 0101010101 or 1010101010? The language was not limited.
3. Given a DOM structure, which table has the most cells? The input was an HTML structure with <tr><td></td></tr> tags.

Virtual Onsite: The virtual onsite was divided into two rounds. The first round was behavioral questions, which lasted approximately 45 minutes. I was told to refer to the standard behavioral questions.

The second round was a technical phone screen:

1. Am I familiar with Java garbage collection mechanisms? How to manually trigger garbage collection?
2. Write a reference casting.
3. Implement the following using priority queue:
   • Sort List - LeetCode 148
   • Merge k Sorted Lists - LeetCode 23

The technical screen lasted about 70 minutes. I was also asked if I had any questions for them.

Overall, the interview was relatively simple. The interviewers were two males, and later joined by a female and another male. The interviewers were nice. The total interview time was around 70 minutes.

LeetCode similar: LeetCode 148, LeetCode 23