Clearwater Analytics Interview Questions and Answers for Freshers

Round duration - 90 minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

 Around 65-70 people sat for the test. 15 people were shortlisted. It consisted of the following to be done in 90 minutes.

- 28 MCQs based on core CS 

- 2 Coding questions – everyone had different and random questions. Most questions were custom logic based (easy level) including some standard questions – LCS, LIS, topological sort.

Round duration - 60 minutes
Round difficulty - Easy

Interviewer was very friendly. It started with the standard – tell me about yourself / introduce yourself type of question. Then he proceeded and asked two coding questions

Q1. 
Remove Duplicates from a Sorted Linked List
Your friend has homework to complete. Help him by removing duplicates from a sorted linked list.
You are given the 'Head' of a sorted linked list. Modify the l...read more
Ans. 
Remove duplicates from a sorted linked list without adjacent duplicates.
• Traverse the linked list while comparing current and next nodes.

• If they are equal, skip the next node by updating the current node's next pointer.

• Repeat until the end of the list is reached.
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Q2. 
Course Schedule Problem Statement
You are enrolled as a student and must complete N courses, numbered from 1 to N, to earn your degree.
Some courses have prerequisites, which means that to take course i,...read more
Ans. 
Check if it is feasible to complete all courses with prerequisites.
• Create a graph representing the prerequisites with courses as nodes and edges as prerequisites.

• Perform a topological sort on the graph to check if there is a cycle (if there is, then it's not feasible to complete all courses).

• If there is no cycle, then it is feasible to complete all courses.
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Round duration - 60 minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

This round had only 1 question. The interviewer introduced himself. And he advised me to clearly understand the problem before proceeding.

Q1. 
LCA of Binary Tree Problem Statement
You are given a binary tree of distinct integers, along with two nodes, ‘X’ and ‘Y’. Your task is to determine the Lowest Common Ancestor (LCA) of ‘X’ and ‘Y’.
The LC...read more
Ans. 
Find the Lowest Common Ancestor of two nodes in a binary tree.
• Traverse the binary tree to find the paths from the root to nodes X and Y.

• Compare the paths to find the last common node, which is the Lowest Common Ancestor.

• Implement a recursive function to efficiently find the LCA.

• Handle cases where one node is an ancestor of the other.

• Consider edge cases like when X or Y is the root node.
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Round duration - 60 minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

Pretty Good Round. Fast Paced. We covered a lot of ground.

Q1. 
Binary Search Tree Iterator Problem Statement
Design and implement a class BSTIterator to perform an in-order traversal over a Binary Search Tree (BST). Your implementation should include the following me...read more
Ans. 
Design and implement a class BSTIterator to perform in-order traversal over a Binary Search Tree (BST).
• Implement a parameterized constructor to initialize the iterator with the root of the BST.

• Implement a method 'next()' to return the next smallest element in in-order traversal.

• Implement a method 'hasNext()' to check if there exists a next smallest element in traversal.

• Ensure the output is the in-order traversal of the
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Q2. 
Maximum Consecutive Ones Problem Statement
Given a binary array 'ARR' of size 'N', your task is to determine the maximum length of a sequence consisting solely of 1’s that can be obtained by converting at...read more
Ans. 
Find the maximum length of a sequence of 1's by converting at most K zeroes into ones in a binary array.
• Iterate through the array and keep track of the current window of 1's and zeroes.

• Use a sliding window approach to find the maximum length of consecutive 1's by flipping at most K zeroes.

• Update the window based on the number of zeroes flipped and keep track of the maximum length found so far.

• Return the maximum length ...read more
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Q3. 
BFS in Graph Problem Statement
You are given an undirected and disconnected graph G(V, E) having V vertices numbered from 0 to V-1 and E edges. Your task is to print its BFS traversal starting from the 0t...read more
Ans. 
BFS traversal of an undirected and disconnected graph starting from vertex 0.
• Start BFS traversal from vertex 0 and visit all connected nodes in sorted order.

• Use a queue to keep track of nodes to visit next.

• Keep a visited array to avoid revisiting nodes.

• Print the BFS traversal path as the nodes are visited.

• Example: For input V=5, E=4 and edges 0-1, 0-2, 1-3, 2-4, the BFS traversal will be [0, 1, 2, 3, 4].
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Q4. 
Dijkstra's Shortest Path Problem Statement
Given an undirected graph with V vertices (labeled 0, 1, ..., V-1) and E edges, each edge connects two nodes X and Y with a specified weight representing the dis...read more
Ans. 
Dijkstra's algorithm is used to find the shortest path distance from a source node to all other nodes in an undirected graph.
• Implement Dijkstra's algorithm to find the shortest path distance from node 0 to all other nodes in the graph.

• Use a priority queue to efficiently select the next node with the shortest distance.

• Initialize distances to all nodes as infinity, except for the source node which is 0.

• Update distances t...read more
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Round duration - 60 minutes
Round difficulty - Hard

Bar Raised Round. Definitely felt the difficulty.

Q1. 
First Non-Repeating Character Problem Statement
You are given a string consisting of English alphabet characters. Your task is to identify and return the first character in the string that does not repeat...read more
Ans. 
Identify and return the first non-repeating character in a string, or the first character if all characters repeat.
• Iterate through the string to count the frequency of each character

• Iterate through the string again to find the first character with frequency 1

• If no such character is found, return the first character of the string
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Round duration - 60 Minutes
Round difficulty - Easy

Q1. 
Find the k-th Node from the End of a Linked List
Given the head node of a singly linked list and an integer 'k', this problem requires you to determine the value at the k-th node from the end of the linke...read more
Ans. 
To find the k-th node from the end of a linked list, iterate through the list to determine the size, then traverse again to reach the k-th node from the end.
• Iterate through the linked list to determine its size.

• Calculate the position of the k-th node from the end based on the size of the list.

• Traverse the list again to reach the k-th node from the end.

• Return a pointer to the k-th node from the end.
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Round duration - 60 Minutes
Round difficulty - Easy

High level System Design

Q1. Can you design a system like Uber, explaining the various components and architecture involved?
Ans. 
Designing a system like Uber involves components like user app, driver app, server, database, and algorithms for matching and routing.
• User app for booking rides and tracking

• Driver app for accepting rides and navigation

• Server for handling requests and communication between apps

• Database for storing user, driver, and ride information

• Algorithms for matching riders with drivers and routing
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Round duration - 45 minutes
Round difficulty - Easy

Basic HR questions

Round duration - 90 Minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

Interview started at 11:00 am. It was an online round. During the coding round I submitted optimized solution and got full acceptance of the solutions.

Q1. 
Detect Cycle in a Directed Graph
You are provided with a directed graph composed of 'N' nodes. You have a matrix called 'EDGES' with dimensions M x 2, which specifies the 'M' edges in the graph. Each edge...read more
Ans. 
Detect cycle in a directed graph using depth-first search (DFS) algorithm.
• Use DFS to traverse the graph and detect back edges indicating a cycle.

• Maintain a visited array to keep track of visited nodes during traversal.

• If a node is visited again during traversal and it is not the parent node, then a cycle exists.

• Return true if a cycle is detected, false otherwise.
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Round duration - 80 Minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

Interview started at 10:00 am. Interview went well, I was able to connect with the interviewer and enjoyed the whole interview

Q1. 
Next Smallest Palindrome Problem Statement
Find the next smallest palindrome strictly greater than a given number 'N' represented as a string 'S'.
Explanation:
You are given a number in string format, a...read more
Ans. 
Find the next smallest palindrome greater than a given number represented as a string.
• Convert the string to an integer, find the next greater palindrome, and convert it back to a string.

• Handle cases where the number is a palindrome or has all digits as '9'.

• Consider both odd and even length numbers when finding the next palindrome.
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Round duration - 80 Minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

Interview started at 11:00 am. Interview went well.

Q1. 
Boundary Traversal of a Binary Tree
Given a binary tree of integers, your task is to return the boundary nodes of the tree in Anti-Clockwise direction starting from the root node.
Input:
The first line ...read more
Ans. 
Return the boundary nodes of a binary tree in Anti-Clockwise direction starting from the root node.
• Traverse the left boundary nodes in a top-down manner

• Traverse the leaf nodes from left to right

• Traverse the right boundary nodes in a bottom-up manner

• Handle cases where duplicates occur in the boundary nodes

• Implement the function without printing as printing is already managed
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Round duration - 90 minutes
Round difficulty - Easy

This was MCQ+Coding round.

Q1. How can you check if two strings are anagrams of each other?
Ans. 
Check if two strings are anagrams by comparing the sorted versions of the strings.
• Sort both strings and compare if they are equal.

• Use a hashmap to store the frequency of characters in each string and compare the maps.

• Ignore spaces and punctuation when comparing the strings.
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Round duration - 90 minutes
Round difficulty - Easy

This was face to face interview round.

Round duration - 90 minutes
Round difficulty - Easy

This was face to face interview round.

Round duration - 60 Minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

This was a Data Structures and Algorithms round with preety good questions . I was expected to come up with an efficient approach and code it as well .

Q1. 
K Closest Points to Origin Problem Statement
Your house is located at the origin (0,0) of a 2-D plane. There are N neighbors living at different points on the plane. Your goal is to visit exactly K neighb...read more
Ans. 
Find the K closest points to the origin in a 2-D plane using Euclidean Distance.
• Calculate the Euclidean Distance of each point from the origin

• Sort the points based on their distances

• Return the first K points as the closest neighbors
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Q2. 
Power Set Generation
Given a sorted array of 'N' integers, your task is to generate the power set for this array. Each subset of this power set should be individually sorted.
A power set of a set 'ARR' i...read more
Ans. 
Generate the power set of a sorted array of integers with individually sorted subsets.
• Use recursion to generate all possible subsets by including or excluding each element in the array.

• Sort each subset before adding it to the power set.

• Handle base cases for empty array and single element array.

• Ensure the subsets are unique by using a set data structure.

• Time complexity can be exponential due to the nature of generating
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Round duration - 50 Minutes
Round difficulty - Hard

This was also a DSA round where I was asked to code only one of the questions but I eventually ended up coding both as I had some spare time and explained my approches very smoothly to the interviewer . This round went preety well .

Q1. 
Roman Numeral to Integer Conversion
Convert a string representing a Roman numeral into its integer equivalent and return the result.
Explanation:
Roman numerals are represented by seven different symbol...read more
Ans. 
Convert a Roman numeral string to its integer equivalent.
• Create a mapping of Roman numeral symbols to their integer values.

• Iterate through the input string and add the corresponding integer values.

• Handle cases where subtraction is needed (e.g., IV = 4, IX = 9).
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Q2. 
Pair Sum Problem Statement
You are given an integer array 'ARR' of size 'N' and an integer 'S'. Your task is to find and return a list of all pairs of elements where each sum of a pair equals 'S'.
Note:
...read more
Ans. 
Find pairs of elements in an array that sum up to a given value, sorted in a specific order.
• Iterate through the array and for each element, check if the complement (S - current element) exists in a hash set.

• If the complement exists, add the pair to the result list.

• Sort the result list based on the criteria mentioned in the question.

• Return the sorted list of pairs.
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Round duration - 50 Minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

This was also a DSA round with 2 questions . One was implementation heavy and the other was related to recursion and so I handled it carefully so that my code does not run into TLE or Segmentation Fault.

Q1. 
Arithmetic Expression Evaluation Problem Statement
You are provided with a string expression consisting of characters '+', '-', '*', '/', '(', ')' and digits '0' to '9', representing an arithmetic express...read more
Ans. 
Evaluate arithmetic expressions in infix notation with given operators and precedence rules.
• Parse the infix expression to postfix using a stack.

• Evaluate the postfix expression using a stack.

• Handle operator precedence and parentheses while evaluating.

• Ensure no division by zero cases and operands fit in 32-bit integer.
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Q2. 
Remove Duplicates from Sorted Array Problem Statement
You are given a sorted integer array ARR of size N. Your task is to remove the duplicates in such a way that each element appears only once. The outpu...read more
Ans. 
Remove duplicates from a sorted array in-place with O(1) extra memory.
• Use two pointers - one for iterating through the array and another for placing unique elements.

• Compare current element with next element to identify duplicates and skip them.

• Update array in-place by moving unique elements to the front.

• Return the length of the array after removal of duplicates.
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Round duration - 50 Minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

This was a typical System Design round where I was asked about the various features of Facebook and what sort of data structures and algorithms are used in implementing them .

Q1. How does Facebook store likes and dislikes?
Ans. 
Facebook stores likes and dislikes using a combination of databases and algorithms.
• Likes and dislikes are stored in databases such as MySQL or Cassandra.

• Algorithms are used to analyze user behavior and recommend content based on likes and dislikes.

• User interactions with posts, pages, and ads are tracked to determine likes and dislikes.

• Likes and dislikes may also be used to personalize the user's feed and target ads mor
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Q2. How does Facebook implement graph search?
Ans. 
Facebook implements graph search using a graph database to efficiently search for connections between users and their interests.
• Facebook uses a graph database to store connections between users, pages, groups, etc.

• The graph search algorithm traverses the graph to find relevant connections based on user queries.

• It takes into account factors like user relationships, interests, and interactions to provide personalized sea
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Round duration - 50 Minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

This was a preety intense round as I was grilled more on my System Design concepts but eventually I was able to asnwers all the questions with some help from the interviewer.

Q1. What is Hadoop and why is it used?
Ans. 
Hadoop is a framework for distributed storage and processing of large data sets.
• Hadoop is used for storing and processing big data across a distributed network of computers.

• It is based on the MapReduce programming model, which allows for parallel processing of data.

• Hadoop consists of HDFS for storage and YARN for resource management.

• It is used for tasks like data warehousing, log processing, recommendation systems, and...read more
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Q2. How does Facebook Chat work?
Ans. 
Facebook Chat works by using a combination of websockets, long polling, and push technology to deliver real-time messaging.
• Facebook Chat uses websockets for real-time communication between the client and server.

• Long polling is used to check for new messages when websockets are not supported.

• Push technology is used to notify users of new messages even when the chat window is not open.

• Messages are stored in a database an...read more
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Round duration - 60 minutes
Round difficulty - Easy

In first round they asked me 2 coding questions where he asked me to code as close as possible to the actual one.

Q1. 
Ninja and Sorted Array Merging Problem
Ninja is tasked with merging two given sorted integer arrays ARR1 and ARR2 of sizes 'M' and 'N', respectively, such that the merged result is a single sorted array w...read more
Ans. 
Merge two sorted arrays into one sorted array in place.
• Use two pointers to compare elements from both arrays and place them in the correct position in ARR1.

• Start from the end of ARR1 and compare elements from both arrays, placing the larger element at the end of ARR1.

• Continue this process until all elements from ARR2 are merged into ARR1.
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Q2. 
Word Distance Calculation
Given a document represented as an array/list ARR of words with length N, find the smallest distance between two given words for multiple queries. The distance is defined as the ...read more
Ans. 
Find the smallest distance between two words in a document for multiple queries.
• Iterate through the document array to find the indices of the two words in each query.

• Calculate the absolute difference between the indices to get the distance.

• If a word from the query is not present in the document, return the length of the document array.

• Repeat the process for each query and output the smallest distance for each.
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Round duration - 60 minutes
Round difficulty - Easy

Then in the second round they asked a little about tree and told me to code 2 codes.

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. 
The problem requires implementing a function to return the level order traversal of a binary tree.
• Implement a function that takes the root of the binary tree as input and returns the level order traversal of the tree.

• Use a queue data structure to perform level order traversal.

• Process each level of the tree one by one, starting from the root node.

• Print the node values at each level in the order they appear from left to ...read more
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Q2. 
Combination Sum Problem Statement
Given an array of distinct positive integers ARR and a non-negative integer 'B', find all unique combinations in the array where the sum is equal to 'B'. Numbers can be c...read more
Ans. 
Find all unique combinations in an array where the sum is equal to a given target sum, with elements in non-decreasing order.
• Use backtracking to generate all possible combinations.

• Sort the array to ensure elements are in non-decreasing order.

• Track the current combination and sum while backtracking.

• Terminate recursion when the sum equals the target sum.

• Avoid duplicates by skipping elements that have been used in previou
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Round duration - 30 minutes
Round difficulty - Easy

HR round with typical behavioral problems.