ESP Prosearch SDE-2 Interview Questions and Answers

Round duration - 30 minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

Q1. 
Remove Consecutive Duplicates Problem Statement
Given a string S, your task is to recursively remove all consecutive duplicate characters from the string.
Input:
String S
Output:
Output string
Constr...read more
Ans. 
Recursively remove consecutive duplicate characters from a string.
• Use recursion to check if the current character is the same as the next character, if so, skip the next character

• Base case: if the string is empty or has only one character, return the string

• Recursive case: if the current character is the same as the next character, call the function recursively with the string excluding the next character
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Round duration - 90 minutes
Round difficulty - Easy

Q1. 
Reverse String Operations Problem Statement
You are provided with a string S and an array of integers A of size M. Your task is to perform M operations on the string as specified by the indices in array A...read more
Ans. 
Perform a series of reverse string operations on a given string based on specified indices.
• Iterate through the array of indices and reverse the substring of the string based on the given indices.

• Ensure to reverse the substring from the starting index to len(S) - starting index - 1.

• Continue the operations in the sequence specified by the array of indices to get the final string.
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Round duration - 50 minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

Round duration - 60 minutes
Round difficulty - Easy

It is online round and it was conducted around 11 AM on campus. Difficulty was medium. 2 coding questions were asked. One question is based on arrays(easy) and the other question is based on usage of oops concepts like Inheritance, polymorphism. Everything went smooth.

Q1. 
Subarray With Given Sum Problem Statement
Given an array ARR of N integers and an integer S, determine if there exists a contiguous subarray within the array with a sum equal to S. If such a subarray exis...read more
Ans. 
Given an array of integers, find a subarray with a given sum S.
• Use a sliding window approach to find the subarray with the given sum.

• Keep track of the current sum and adjust the window based on the sum.

• Return the start and end indices of the subarray if found, otherwise return [-1, -1].
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Round duration - 50 minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

Round started with self introduction and discussion of project. Everything went fine.
Note: we didn't have hr round due to time constraint. You can expect hr round.

Q1. 
Find the Duplicate Number Problem Statement
Given an integer array 'ARR' of size 'N' containing numbers from 0 to (N - 2). Each number appears at least once, and there is one number that appears twice. Yo...read more
Ans. 
Find the duplicate number in an array of integers from 0 to (N-2).
• Iterate through the array and keep track of the frequency of each number using a hashmap.

• Return the number with a frequency greater than 1 as the duplicate number.
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Q2. Can you explain the concept of normalization and its types?
Ans. 
Normalization is the process of organizing data in a database to reduce redundancy and improve data integrity.
• Normalization is used to eliminate data redundancy and ensure data integrity in a database.

• There are different normal forms such as 1NF, 2NF, 3NF, BCNF, and 4NF.

• Each normal form has specific rules that must be followed to ensure data is properly organized.

• Normalization helps in reducing data anomalies and incon...read more
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Q3. Can you explain the ACID properties in the context of database management systems?
Ans. 
ACID properties are essential characteristics of a transaction in a database management system.
• Atomicity ensures that either all operations in a transaction are completed successfully or none of them are.

• Consistency ensures that the database remains in a valid state before and after the transaction.

• Isolation ensures that the execution of multiple transactions concurrently does not interfere with each other.

• Durability e...read more
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Q4. Can you explain the concepts of Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) with real-life examples?
Ans. 
OOP is a programming paradigm based on the concept of objects, which can contain data and code to manipulate that data.
• OOP focuses on creating objects that interact with each other to solve complex problems.

• Encapsulation: Objects can hide their internal state and require interactions through well-defined interfaces. Example: A car object with methods like start(), stop(), accelerate().

• Inheritance: Objects can inherit a...read more
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2 coding questions

Q1. Ds algo round 2 medium questions
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Round duration - 60 mins
Round difficulty - Medium

3 Questions were asked : 2- Trees and 1- Stack.
Interviewer was not receptive at all, I think this was a stress interview.

Q1. 
Validate Binary Search Tree Problem Statement
Given a binary tree with 'N' nodes, determine if it is a Binary Search Tree (BST). Return true if the tree is a BST, otherwise return false.
Example:
Input:
...read more
Ans. 
Validate if a given binary tree is a Binary Search Tree (BST) or not.
• Check if the left subtree of a node contains only nodes with values less than the node's value.

• Check if the right subtree of a node contains only nodes with values greater than the node's value.

• Ensure that both the left and right subtrees are also binary search trees.

• Traverse the tree in-order and check if the elements are in sorted order.

• Use a recurs...read more
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Q2. 
Binary Tree Conversion to Greater Tree
Given a binary tree with 'N' nodes, transform it into a Greater Tree. In this transformation, each node's value should be updated to the sum of its original value and...read more
Ans. 
Convert a binary tree into a Greater Tree by updating each node's value to the sum of its original value and the values of all nodes greater than or equal to it.
• Traverse the tree in reverse inorder (right, root, left) to update the nodes' values.

• Keep track of the sum of nodes visited so far to update each node's value.

• Recursively update the node's value by adding the sum of greater nodes to it.
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Q3. 
Check for Valid Parentheses
You are given a string STR containing only the characters "{", "}", "(", ")", "[", and "]". Your task is to determine if the parentheses in the string are balanced.
Input:
Th...read more
Ans. 
Check if the given string containing only parentheses is balanced or not.
• Use a stack to keep track of opening parentheses.

• Iterate through the string and push opening parentheses onto the stack.

• When a closing parenthesis is encountered, pop from the stack and check if it matches the corresponding opening parenthesis.

• If at the end the stack is empty, return 'YES' else return 'NO'.
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Round duration - 60 mins
Round difficulty - Hard

2 Coding Questions were asked, both were of Medium to Hard Difficulty.

Q1. 
Flatten Multi-Level Linked List
You are given a multi-level linked list containing 'N' nodes. Each node has 'next' and 'child' pointers that may or may not point to other nodes. Your task is to flatten th...read more
Ans. 
Flatten a multi-level linked list into a single linked list by rearranging the pointers.
• Traverse the linked list and whenever a node has a child, flatten the child list and append it after the current node.

• Update the 'next' and 'child' pointers accordingly while flattening the list.

• Continue this process until all nodes are rearranged into a single linked list.
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Q2. 
Rain Water Trapping Problem Statement
Given an array/list ARR of size N, representing an elevation map where each element ARR[i] denotes the elevation of the i-th bar. Your task is to calculate and print ...read more
Ans. 
Calculate the total amount of rainwater that can be trapped between given elevations in an elevation map.
• Use two-pointer approach to keep track of left and right boundaries.

• Calculate the trapped water by finding the minimum of left_max and right_max for each bar.

• Subtract the current bar's height from the minimum of left_max and right_max to get the trapped water.

• Keep updating the left_max and right_max as you iterate t
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Round duration - 90 minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

Timing : It was late night.
How the interviewer was? He was very tired and I had to lead the discussion.
1 System Design Question was asked, had to provide - HLD, LLD, APIs.

Round duration - 60 minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

Timing : Afternoon
How was the environment? Home
Interviewer : Hiring Manager

Q1. Hiring Manager Discussion
Discussed about past Projects, challenges faced, disagreements with manager, why looking for job switch,  leadership principle questions were asked.
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Round duration - 60 minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

Timing - Afternoon
How was the environment? Home
How the interviewer was? Very Helpful Interviewer
Bar raiser Round - Coding + System Design + Leadership principle

Round duration - 180 minutes
Round difficulty - Hard

Timing: 8 a.m. to 11a.m.
Environment was optimum.
No significant activity.

Q1. 
Edit Distance Problem Statement
Given two strings S and T with lengths N and M respectively, your task is to find the "Edit Distance" between these strings.
The Edit Distance is defined as the minimum nu...read more
Ans. 
The task is to find the minimum number of operations required to convert one string into another using delete, replace, and insert operations.
• Use dynamic programming to solve the problem efficiently.

• Create a 2D array to store the minimum edit distance for substrings of the two input strings.

• Iterate through the strings and update the array based on the operations needed for each character.

• Return the value in the bottom ...read more
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Round duration - 30 minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

Timing: 12:00 p.m. to 12:30 p.m.
The environment was quite good.
No significant activity.
Interviewers were very friendly. They were behaving like friends.

Round duration - 15 minutes
Round difficulty - Easy

Timing: 3:00 p.m. to 3:20 p.m.
Environment was very good.
No significant activity was monitored.
HR was very good and friendly.

Round duration - 30 minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

It was in the morning about 10:00AM-10:40AM. The platform used for this round was hackerrank. There are 15 MCQ's which cover portions of Aptitude, Data Structures, DBMS, SQL

Q1. 
Minimum Operations Problem Statement
You are given an array 'ARR' of size 'N' consisting of positive integers. Your task is to determine the minimum number of operations required to make all elements in t...read more
Ans. 
Minimum number of operations to make all elements in the array equal by performing addition, subtraction, multiplication, or division.
• Iterate through the array to find the maximum and minimum values.

• Calculate the difference between the maximum and minimum values.

• The minimum number of operations needed is the difference between the maximum and minimum values.
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Round duration - 15 minutes
Round difficulty - Easy

It was in the night around 7:00PM-7:20PM. Platform used for this round was skype. Interviewer was very serious while taking my interview.

Round duration - 360 minutes
Round difficulty - Hard

Timing- Any 6 hours of my choice in the 24 hour window. (10:00 p.m. to 4:00 a.m. I selected)
Environment was very friendly and easy to use.
No significant activity.
This was the only coding round.

Q1. 
Prime Time Again Problem Statement
You are given two integers DAY_HOURS and PARTS. The integer 'DAY_HOURS' represents the number of hours in a day, and the day can be divided into 'PARTS' equal parts. You...read more
Ans. 
Find total instances of equivalent prime groups in a day divided into equal parts.
• Iterate through each part of the day and check for prime pairs in different parts

• Use a helper function to check if a number is prime

• Ensure the day is evenly divided by parts and each prime group has hours from different parts
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Round duration - 10-15 minutes
Round difficulty - Easy

Timing- 12:15 p.m. 
Environment was very good .
Not any significant activity.
The interviewer was very friendly and talked like friends.

Round duration - 20 minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

Timing- 12:30 p.m. to 12:45 p.m
Environment was very comfortable.
No other significant activity.
Interviewer was very good and talking very politely & friendly.

Round duration - 60 minutes
Round difficulty - Easy

Started with brief intro(5 mins) about interviewer.
Problem solving question, question was already there in the codelink shared by the interviewer. He explained the problem again with sample testcase. 
The Interviewer was friendly.

Q1. 
Course Schedule II Problem Statement
You are provided with a number of courses 'N', some of which have prerequisites. There is a matrix named 'PREREQUISITES' of size 'M' x 2. This matrix indicates that fo...read more
Ans. 
Given courses with prerequisites, determine a valid order to complete all courses.
• Create a graph with courses as nodes and prerequisites as edges.

• Use topological sorting to find a valid order to complete all courses.

• Return an empty list if it's impossible to complete all courses.
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Q2. Design a live video broadcast platform.
Ans. 
Design a live video broadcast platform.
• Implement video streaming functionality using protocols like RTMP or WebRTC

• Include features for live chat, reactions, and audience engagement

• Ensure scalability and reliability by using cloud services like AWS or Azure

• Provide analytics for viewership data and user engagement

• Integrate monetization options such as ads or subscriptions
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Round duration - 90 minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

There were 2 interviewers(India HM and Seattle HM), India HM was just shadowing and didn't ask any questions. Started with intro, he asked in detail about what I do at current company(10 mins). Again, jumped into LP's(25 mins).

Q1. 
Distance Between Two Nodes in a Binary Tree
Given a binary tree and the values of two distinct nodes, determine the distance between these two nodes in the tree. The distance is defined as the minimum num...read more
Ans. 
Calculate the distance between two nodes in a binary tree.
• Traverse the tree to find the paths from the root to each node

• Find the lowest common ancestor of the two nodes

• Calculate the distance by summing the distances from each node to the common ancestor
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Q2. 
Median in a Stream Problem Statement
Your task is to determine the median of integers as they are read from a data stream. The median is the middle value in the ordered list of numbers. If the list length...read more
Ans. 
Find median of integers in a data stream as they are read.
• Use two heaps - max heap for lower half of numbers and min heap for upper half.

• Keep the size of two heaps balanced to find the median efficiently.

• Handle even and odd number of elements separately to calculate median.

• Return vector of medians after each element is read from the stream.
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Round duration - 60 minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

There was only 1 interviewer in this round and We had no video sharing in this round so it was becoming difficult to understand each other.