Flipkart SDE-2 Interview Questions, Process, and Tips

Round duration - 1hour
Round difficulty - Hard

Q1. 
Snake and Ladder Problem Statement
Given a 'Snake and Ladder' board with N rows and N columns, where positions are numbered from 1 to (N*N) starting from the bottom left, alternating direction each row, f...read more
Ans. 
Find the minimum number of dice throws required to reach the last cell on a 'Snake and Ladder' board.
• Use Breadth First Search (BFS) algorithm to find the shortest path from start to end cell.

• Keep track of visited cells and the number of dice throws required to reach each cell.

• Consider the presence of snakes and ladders while calculating the next possible moves.

• Return the minimum number of dice throws to reach the last
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Round duration - 1hour
Round difficulty - Hard

Q1.  Stack using queue
Mvvm architecture
Ans. 
Implement a stack using a queue in MVVM architecture
• Use two queues to simulate a stack

• Push operation: Enqueue the element to queue 1

• Pop operation: Dequeue all elements from queue 1 to queue 2, dequeue the last element from queue 2 (which is the top of the stack)

• Ensure proper synchronization between the two queues

• Example: Push(1), Push(2), Pop() should return 2
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Round duration - 1hour
Round difficulty - Easy

Round duration - 60 minutes
Round difficulty - Easy

Timing: evening
Environment: Online round took at home

Q1. 
Smallest Subarray with K Distinct Elements Problem
Given an array A consisting of N integers, find the smallest subarray of A that contains exactly K distinct integers.
Input:
The first line contains tw...read more
Ans. 
Find the smallest subarray with exactly K distinct integers in an array.
• Use a sliding window approach to keep track of the subarray with K distinct integers.

• Use a hashmap to store the frequency of each integer in the current window.

• Update the window size based on the number of distinct integers found.

• Keep track of the smallest subarray meeting the criteria.

• Return the starting and ending indices of the smallest subarray
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Round duration - 90 minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

Machine coding round

Round duration - 60 minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

Q1. 
Rat In a Maze Problem Statement
Given a N * N maze with a rat placed at position MAZE[0][0], find and print all possible paths for the rat to reach its destination at MAZE[N-1][N-1]. The rat is allowed to...read more
Ans. 
The problem involves finding all possible paths for a rat to reach its destination in a maze.
• Use backtracking to explore all possible paths in the maze.

• Mark visited cells to avoid revisiting them.

• Return the path once the destination is reached.

• Handle edge cases like blocked cells and out-of-bounds movements.
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Round duration - 60-90 minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

Round duration - 60 minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

Hiring Manager round

Round duration - 60 minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

It was a telephonic interview at 10 in the morning. Interviewer seemed cool.

Q1. 
Best Insert Position for a Target in a Sorted Array
You are provided with a sorted array A of length N consisting of distinct integers and a target integer M. Your task is to determine the position where ...read more
Ans. 
Find the best insert position for a target in a sorted array to maintain order.
• Use binary search to find the correct position for the target integer in the sorted array.

• If the target is already present in the array, return its index.

• Maintain the sorted order of the array after inserting the target integer.

• Handle edge cases like empty array or target being smaller than the first element or larger than the last element.
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Round duration - 60 minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

The interview was in the morning at 10 AM in the office meeting room.

Q1. 
House Robber Problem Statement
Mr. X is a professional robber with a plan to rob houses arranged in a circular street. Each house has a certain amount of money hidden, separated by a security system that ...read more
Ans. 
House Robber problem - find maximum amount of money Mr. X can rob without triggering alarm in circular street.
• Use dynamic programming to keep track of maximum money robbed at each house.

• Consider two cases - robbing the first house and not robbing the first house.

• Handle circular arrangement by considering the first and last houses separately.

• Return the maximum amount of money that can be robbed without triggering the al
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Round duration - 60 minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

The interview was at 11 AM in the meeting office.

Q1. 
Running Median Problem
Given a stream of integers, calculate and print the median after each new integer is added to the stream.
Output only the integer part of the median.
Example:
Input:
N = 5  
Stre...read more
Ans. 
Calculate and print the median after each new integer is added to the stream.
• Use a min heap to store the larger half of the numbers and a max heap to store the smaller half of the numbers.

• Keep the two heaps balanced by ensuring the size difference is at most 1.

• If the total number of elements is odd, the median is the top element of the larger heap. If even, it's the average of the tops of both heaps.
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Round duration - 60 minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

The interview was at 1 AM.

Round duration - 60 minutes
Round difficulty - Easy

The meeting was at 2 PM in the office meeting room.

Round duration - 60 minutes
Round difficulty - Easy

10 AM

Q1. Can you provide a deeper discussion about all the projects you completed in your previous company?
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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

2 coding questions

Q1. Ds algo round 2 medium questions
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