Swiggy SDE-2 (Backend) Interview Experience || 40 LPA | Kumar K | December 2025

Question

Swiggy SDE-2 Interview Experience (Backend)

Status: Rejected

Experience Level: 2+ years (Backend — Java/Spring + Node)

Location: Bangalore (onsite rounds)

 

Online Assessment (OA)

Solved all the questions.

Unfortunately, I don’t remember the exact problems, but overall difficulty was Medium–Hard and very DSA-focused.

 

Round 1 — DSA + LLD (60 min)

1. DSA:

 

Given a rotated sorted array, find the smallest element in O(log n).

2. LLD:

 

Parking Lot System

 

Standard problem.

Discussed entities (Vehicle, Slot, Ticket, Payment)

Covered allocation strategy and class diagram.

Overall went fine.

 

Round 2 — LLD + HLD (60 min)

Problem: Train Ticket Booking System

 

Explained all entities clearly (Train, Coach, Seat, Booking, User, Search Service).

Covered seat allocation, concurrency control, waitlist logic, and basic high-level design.

I thought it went well, but still got rejected after this round.

 

My Takeaway

I've been giving interviews continuously for the past couple of months, and one thing is clear:

 

 Startup expectations have gone very high.

Even if you do well but struggle briefly in a part of the problem, they will likely reject you.

They expect you to basically mug up all LLD/HLD patterns and solve instantly.

 

Not the most fair process, but that’s the current market.