VMware Software Staff Engineer Interview Questions and Answers

Round duration - 50 minutes
Round difficulty - Easy

This was a Data Structural round.

Q1. 
Distinct Islands Problem Statement
Given a two-dimensional array/list consisting of integers 0s and 1s, where 1 represents land and 0 represents water, determine the number of distinct islands. A group of...read more
Ans. 
Count the number of distinct islands in a 2D array of 0s and 1s.
• Identify islands by performing depth-first search (DFS) on the grid

• Use a set to store the shape of each island and check for duplicates

• Consider translations to determine distinct islands
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Round duration - 50 minutes
Round difficulty - Easy

This was a Data Structural round.

Q1. 
Word Wrap Problem Statement
You are tasked with arranging 'N' words of varying lengths such that each line contains at most 'M' characters, with each word separated by a space. The challenge is to minimiz...read more
Ans. 
The goal is to minimize the total cost of arranging 'N' words on each line with a maximum character limit 'M'.
• Calculate the cost of each line as the cube of extra space characters needed to reach 'M'.

• Minimize the total cost by arranging words to fit within the character limit on each line.

• Ensure each word appears fully on one line without breaking across lines.
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Round duration - 60 minutes
Round difficulty - Easy

This was a System Design round.

Q1. Can you design a system similar to Red Bus that can handle bookings and onboard both vendors and customers to the platform?
Ans. 
Design a system similar to Red Bus for handling bookings and onboarding vendors and customers.
• Implement a user-friendly interface for customers to search and book tickets

• Create a vendor portal for vendors to manage their offerings and availability

• Include payment gateway integration for secure transactions

• Develop a robust backend system for managing bookings, cancellations, and refunds

• Utilize a database to store user in...read more
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Round duration - 50 minutes
Round difficulty - Easy

This was a System Design round

Round duration - 50 minutes
Round difficulty - Easy

This was an HR round.

Round duration - 1 hour
Round difficulty - Medium

Q1. 
First Missing Positive Problem Statement
You are provided with an integer array ARR of length 'N'. Your objective is to determine the first missing positive integer using linear time and constant space. T...read more
Ans. 
Find the smallest positive integer missing from an array of integers.
• Iterate through the array and mark positive integers as visited by changing the sign of the corresponding index.

• After marking all positive integers, iterate again to find the first positive integer with a positive value.

• Return the index of the first positive integer found plus one as the answer.
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Arrays, Graphs majorly asked
Practice Leetcode

Round duration - 45 Minutes
Round difficulty - Easy

Had some small chit-chat regarding how Work from Home is going on for him and me. Later he introduced himself and asked the same.
Coming to technical questions, he asked me the algorithm and also asked me to code the questions mentioned below. Discussed the time complexities and edge cases.

Q1. 
Spiral Matrix Problem Statement
You are given a N x M matrix of integers. Your task is to return the spiral path of the matrix elements.
Input
The first line contains an integer 'T' which denotes the nu...read more
Ans. 
The task is to return the spiral path of elements in a given matrix.
• Iterate over the matrix in a spiral path by keeping track of the boundaries.

• Print the elements in the spiral path as you traverse the matrix.

• Handle cases where the matrix is not a square matrix separately.
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Q2. 
Group Anagrams Problem Statement
Given an array or list of strings called inputStr, your task is to return the strings grouped as anagrams. Each group should contain strings that are anagrams of one anoth...read more
Ans. 
Group anagrams in an array of strings based on character frequency.
• Create a hashmap to store sorted strings as keys and corresponding anagrams as values.

• Iterate through the input strings, sort each string, and add it to the hashmap.

• Return the values of the hashmap as grouped anagrams.
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Round duration - 45 Minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

This round started without any introduction, and he directly jumped into the question. Asked me about the algorithm, and later coded it and ran it. And then he asked me to optimize it. Finally, he asked me if I had any questions.

Q1. 
Tic-Tac-Toe Design Problem
Design a 2-player Tic-Tac-Toe game played on an N * N grid where Player 1 uses ‘X’ and Player 2 uses ‘O’. A move is always valid and occupies an empty spot.
If a player places ...read more
Ans. 
Design a 2-player Tic-Tac-Toe game on an N x N grid where players take turns placing their marks, and the first player to get N marks in a row wins.
• Implement a function move(row, col, player) to handle each player's move and check for a win condition.

• Keep track of the board state and update it after each move.

• Check for winning conditions horizontally, vertically, and diagonally after each move.

• Return the result (0 for ...read more
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Round duration - 90 minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

This round was conducted in Hackerrank portal for a total duration of 95 minutes and was divided into 4 sections.

1st Section : Aptitude Section : 14 questions , 28 minutes
2nd Section : Technical Section : 12 questions , 17 minutes
3rd Section :1 coding Questions : 20 minutes+30 minutes

Q1. 
Water Equalization Problem Statement
You are provided with an array ARR of positive integers. Each integer represents the number of liters of water in a bucket. The goal is to make the liters of water in ...read more
Ans. 
Given an array of water buckets, find the minimum liters of water to remove to make all buckets contain the same amount of water.
• Iterate through the array to find the most common amount of water in the buckets.

• Calculate the total liters of water that need to be removed to equalize all buckets to the most common amount.

• Return the total liters of water to be removed.
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Q2. 
Rat in a Maze Problem Statement
You need to determine all possible paths for a rat starting at position (0, 0) in a square maze to reach its destination at (N-1, N-1). The maze is represented as an N*N ma...read more
Ans. 
Find all possible paths for a rat in a maze from source to destination.
• Use backtracking to explore all possible paths in the maze.

• Keep track of visited cells to avoid revisiting them.

• Explore all possible directions (up, down, left, right) from each cell.

• Add the current direction to the path and recursively explore further.

• If the destination is reached, add the path to the list of valid paths.
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Round duration - 120 Minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

This was an Online F2F Technical Round conducted on CodePair : Hackerrank. So, Basically You have to Run and Submit ( Pass All Test cases) in the Interview Round also (Like normal Coding Test) in Codepair : Hackerrank & along with that You should have to explain your Code and Approach to the Interviewers.
The Interviewers were helpful and didn't hesitate in giving hints.
Timing - 10:00 A.M to 12:00 P.M

Q1. 
Minimum Fountains Activation Problem
In this problem, you have a one-dimensional garden of length 'N'. Each position from 0 to 'N' has a fountain that can provide water to the garden up to a certain range...read more
Ans. 
Find the minimum number of fountains to activate to water the entire garden.
• Iterate through the array to find the coverage of each fountain.

• Keep track of the farthest coverage reached by activating fountains.

• Activate the fountain that covers the farthest point not yet covered.

• Repeat until the entire garden is watered.
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Q2. 
Minimize Cash Flow Problem
You are provided with a list of 'transactions' involving 'n' friends who owe each other money. Each entry in the list contains information about a receiver, sender, and the tran...read more
Ans. 
Minimize cash flow problem among friends by optimizing transactions.
• Create a graph where nodes represent friends and edges represent transactions.

• Calculate net amount each friend owes or is owed by summing up all transactions.

• Use a recursive algorithm to minimize cash flow by settling debts between friends.

• Update the graph and repeat the process until all debts are settled.
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Round duration - 120 Minutes
Round difficulty - Hard

A lot of Variants based on Constraints were asked in this Round. They will ask you to write the final code for every question before Submitting it(run all test cases) so you won’t get any hints after running test cases in the IDE. ( So don’t Submit your code before dry running it on a lot of Test Cases on pen & paper , they allow to use pen & blank paper at the time of Interviews) .The Interviewers tried to trick in case of time complexities even if you gave the best one. So try to be confident.

Q1. 
Buy and Sell Stock Problem Statement
Imagine you are Harshad Mehta's friend, and you have been given the stock prices of a particular company for the next 'N' days. You can perform up to two buy-and-sell ...read more
Ans. 
The task is to determine the maximum profit that can be achieved by performing up to two buy-and-sell transactions on a given set of stock prices.
• Iterate through the array of stock prices and keep track of the maximum profit that can be achieved by buying and selling at different points.

• Maintain variables to store the maximum profit after the first transaction, the maximum profit after the second transaction, and the m...read more
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Round duration - 30 minutes
Round difficulty - Easy

This was HR Round. The HR was friendly and asked basic questions.
The timing was 2:00 PM to 2:30 PM.