Paypal Interview Experience | SDE-3
Hello Everyone! I am writing this post to help out job seekers who are preparing for Mobile development job profile by sharing my interview experience at Paypal for the role of SDE-3.
The process took a quite long, almost 2 months as there was requirement freeze for the first team which I had applied for, so they shifted for another team with a repeated Android internals round.
In general there are 4 rounds, 3 tech and 1 managerial. (For me it was 5 as I mentioned the team change above) You can ask your recruiter to shuffle the tech rounds as per your preference of competency. For eg, I asked them to push DSA round to the last one as I needed little time to brush it up with some practise and schedule Android internals as first one. The details of the round are as follows.
Tech round 1: (Android Internals)
This comprised of questions based on MVVM architecture, android multithreading and a very in-depth basics of Android components lifecycle and other Android Jetpack components.
This round was fairly basic but I think that was a matter of luck for me. When there was a call for the team change for the open role, this interview round was repeated for me.
Tech round 2: (Android Internals again)
This round was quite in depth with Android internals. Core knowledge of multi-threading for Android OS was discussed in detail. The unit testing was also emphasised in the round. One should prepare for UI , ViewModel and repository basic unit testing to answer these questions.
I would suggest be up-to-date with latest Android tech stack even if they are not currently being used in your current organisation. It gives a sense that you would pick things faster if required at work.
Tech round 3: (System design)
This round focused more on architecture, Android components choice and their interaction within the app. I was asked to design a game (Can’t disclose question due to NDA) with multiple screens and the interaction between them. We need to discuss what choice of tech we use to achieve the use case of the given problem and further how the multiple screens interact and should share data with each other. I’ve shared how to approach system design problems in my previous blog of Flipkart interview experience.
Sharing the link below for the reference.
https://kanchan-pal.medium.com/flipkart-interview-android-sde-3-6f649c2292de
I will give a brief overview here, we can state functional, non functional and out of scope requirements for our design problem. Be open for feedbacks and improvements and if you think your approach is the best then explain why it is best suited for the given case. Use exaclidraw, or any drawing tool to design components and be vocal as much as possible about your approach.
Tech round 4: (Data structure and Algorithms)
For this round, leetcode medium level questions would be enough. I suggest the same topics as I had suggested for Flipkart interview experience and difficulty level is also similar.
Arrays, Binary Search, Sliding Window, Trees, Heap.
Interview Round 5 (Hiring Manager)
This was only get to know round discussing the culture fit and few behavioural and situation questions like how to deal conflicts etc.
Use STAR method to answer (nothing new here).
Few other discussion around being comfortable with work from home and okay to come to office if asked in future. I just enjoyed this round and nothing else. By this time you are already selected provided no major deal breaker of culture fit. No compensation discussion in this round.
Connect with HR
It was half an hour call to discuss compensation and benefits. If you have any concern regarding the same you can convey the same. After agreeing on the numbers, offer will be rolled out.
That was all I had to share regarding my interview experience at Paypal. I really enjoyed the process and getting to know their tech team.
Should you have any questions, feel free to comment and ask. I would try to answer to the best of my knowledge.
If you find the post informative, please share your claps 👏👏 👏 to motivate for the future blogs. It really means and encourages so much.
Happy to Connect! My coordinates are as follows:
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kanchan-pal-44ba35106/
Github : https://github.com/kanch231004/
Again, don’t forget to clap 👏👏 👏 if you like the post and feel free to suggest/ ask if I miss something.
Happy Learning Happy Sharing!!
