CGI Group Software Engineer Level 1 Interview Questions and Answers

Q1. Reverse a linked List
Ans. 
Reverse a linked list by changing the pointers direction
• Start with three pointers: current, previous, and next

• Iterate through the linked list, updating the pointers to reverse the direction

• Return the new head of the reversed linked list
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Q2. Question on queue
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90 questions in 90 mins on maths, programming, and debugging

2 basic coding questions on strings and array, you can use any language

Q1. My Strenghts and how I use them
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Q2. What is my expected CTC
Ans. 
Expected CTC for Software Engineer Level 1 depends on company, location, experience, and negotiation skills.
• Expected CTC can vary based on company policies and budget.

• Location plays a significant role in determining CTC due to cost of living differences.

• Experience level can impact the salary offered, with more experienced candidates typically receiving higher CTC.

• Negotiation skills can also influence the final CTC offe...read more
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Simple questions, easy to clear

Q1. Related to domain
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Q2. Simple questions related to projects
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Round duration - 90 minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

2 Programing Questions and 30 MCQs. 
Programing questions were medium with one being array manipulation and other being graph based. 

MCQ were from OOPs concepts, SQL, Operating System and Network, prepare in depth knowledge for all the topics.

Q1. 
Count Pairs Problem Statement
You are given an array A of length N consisting only of integers. Additionally, you are provided with three integers X, Y and SUM. Your task is to count the number of pairs (...read more
Ans. 
Using HashMap or self balancing BST for fastest result.
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Q2. 
Longest Substring Without Repeating Characters Problem Statement
Given a string S of length L, determine the length of the longest substring that contains no repeating characters.
Example:
Input:
"abac...read more
Ans. Brute Force
In the brute force approach, we will use two nested loops. The outer loop is used to select the starting index of the substring and the inner loop is used to fix the ending index of the substring. After selecting the substring, we will use another loop (or a method) to check whether the substring contains all unique characters or not using a HashSet.
Space Complexity: O(n)Explanation:
O(L), where L is the len...read more
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Round duration - 90 minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

Questions on SQL and DBMS were asked in this round

Q1. What are the ACID properties in DBMS?
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Q2. Can you explain the different levels of data abstraction in a DBMS?
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Q3. What are constraints in SQL?
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Round duration - 30 minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

HR round was pretty much a casual conversation about why optum, work location, joining availablity and what qualities you would like to highlight about yourself.

Q1. Why do you want to work at Optum, and what qualities would you like to highlight?
Ans. 
Tip 1 : Go through wiki page or google about the working of the company
Tip 2 : Qualities should more aligned to the company's values.
Tip 3 : Show your interest in working with the organisation and how will you contribute to the team.
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Round duration - 90 Minutes
Round difficulty - Easy

First round is Online Test (no negative marking). It was held on campus itself in assigned labs. The test is divided into four main sections:

Q1. 
Level Order Traversal Problem Statement
Given a binary tree of integers, return the level order traversal of the binary tree.
Input:
The first line contains an integer 'T', representing the number of te...read more
Ans. Breadth First Search
In the level order traversal, we will be using queue data structure which has the property FIRST IN FIRST OUT that’s why which nodes come first in current level the children of that node will also come first for the next level. So, we visit all the nodes one by one of the current level and push into the queue so that when we will be complete with the current level, then we can start exploring nodes ...read more
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Q2. 
Reverse Words in a String: Problem Statement
You are given a string of length N. Your task is to reverse the string word by word. The input may contain multiple spaces between words and may have leading o...read more
Ans. Brute force
• Create a String ans to store the reversed string.
• Initialize a variable i to 0 and iterate the whole string through a while loop.
• Skip initial spaces by just incrementing i.
• Create a String that will store the current word.
• Add the currentword and space at the beginning of ans.
• After traversing the whole string, check if the length of ans is greater than 0 then return ans after removing the last space otherwise r...read more
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Round duration - 60 Minutes
Round difficulty - Easy

Technical round:asked general questions about networking, os and troubleshooting.
There were three rounds of interviews, all knockout rounds and were held on the same day. It will be a very long day for you, so I suggest you to be prepared.


This interview is based completely on Networking concepts. They expect you to answer in complete depth and be as detailed as possible. It is very normal for interviewer to keep typing on laptop to record your answers while you speak, so speak only what you are sure about, but do not be intimidated by it. A few questions that were asked:

Round duration - 60 Minutes
Round difficulty - Easy

This round was based on Operating Systems and troubleshooting. Just like Interview 1, they expect you to answer in depth.

Other important topics for AWS Operating Systems and Troubleshooting interview: OS boot process (Win/Linux); Memory management ;Memory pages; Buffer and Caches, Basic commands; System date/time management, network time protocol; Managing Users and groups; File permissions; Managing softwares – installation, uninstallation, upgrade etc; Managing system services and background processes; Remote management of a system – SSH, RDP etc; Network protocols – FTP, HTTP (web servers), SMTP (mail server); System automation – cron, batch jobs, windows startup tasks

Round duration - 45 Minutes
Round difficulty - Easy

Managerial Round- A senior manager from AWS will be taking this interview. It was very conversational and was based mostly on CV. All questions were asked in a completely non technical perspective, but had to be answered pertaining to previous professional tech experiences (be it academic, or internship related), and not in a generalised form.