Interview Experience 1 - MTS Role
Candidate Profile: B.Tech CS, 8.5 CGPA, 2 internships, competitive programming
Round 1 - Online Assessment (90 minutes)
Platform: HackerRank
Problem 1: Longest Palindromic Substring
- Find the longest palindrome within a string
- Difficulty: Medium
- My Approach: Expand around center O(n²)
- Time Taken: 25 minutes
- Result: All test cases passed
def longestPalindrome(s): def expand(left, right): while left >= 0 and right < len(s) and s[left] == s[right]: left -= 1 right += 1 return s[left+1:right]
result = "" for i in range(len(s)): odd = expand(i, i) even = expand(i, i+1) result = max(result, odd, even, key=len) return resultProblem 2: Minimum Window Substring
- Find minimum window containing all characters of target
- Difficulty: Hard
- My Approach: Sliding window with hashmap
- Time Taken: 35 minutes
- Result: Passed all test cases
Problem 3: LRU Cache Implementation
- Design LRU cache with O(1) get/put
- Difficulty: Medium
- My Approach: HashMap + Doubly Linked List
- Time Taken: 25 minutes
- Result: Passed all test cases
Tips:
- Practice LeetCode medium-hard problems
- Focus on optimal time complexity
- Handle edge cases carefully
- Adobe OA is DSA-heavy
Round 2 - Technical Interview 1 (60 minutes)
Mode: Video call (Zoom) Interviewer: Senior Software Engineer
Problem 1: Serialize and Deserialize Binary Tree
- Convert tree to string and back
- My Approach: BFS with null markers
- Discussion: Multiple approaches, trade-offs
- Time: 25 minutes including discussion
Problem 2: Trapping Rain Water
- Calculate water trapped between buildings
- My Approach: Two-pointer technique
- Explained time and space complexity
- Time: 20 minutes
Follow-up Questions:
- “Can you optimize the space complexity?”
- “What if buildings have varying widths?”
- “How would you handle very large inputs?”
Project Discussion (15 minutes):
- Discussed my internship project (image processing)
- Deep dive into algorithms used
- Challenges faced and solutions
Tips:
- Think out loud during coding
- Discuss trade-offs between approaches
- Be ready for follow-up questions
- Know your projects thoroughly
Round 3 - Technical Interview 2 (60 minutes)
Interviewer: Tech Lead
Problem 1: Word Ladder (BFS)
- Find shortest transformation sequence
- My Approach: BFS with visited set
- Discussed optimization strategies
- Time: 30 minutes
System Design Discussion (20 minutes):
- “How would you design a document storage system?”
- Discussed components: storage, indexing, search
- Talked about scalability and caching
CS Fundamentals (10 minutes):
- Explain process vs thread
- What is virtual memory?
- Database indexing and B-trees
Tips:
- Prepare for basic system design
- Revise CS fundamentals
- Show depth in problem-solving
Round 4 - Hiring Manager Round (45 minutes)
Interviewer: Engineering Manager
Questions Asked:
-
“Tell me about yourself”
- Brief technical introduction
- Highlighted key achievements
-
“Why Adobe?”
- Mentioned Adobe’s creative products
- Interest in working on impactful software
- Adobe’s engineering culture
-
“Tell me about a challenging project”
- Discussed image processing project
- Challenges: performance optimization
- Learnings and impact
-
“How do you handle disagreements in team?”
- Gave specific example from internship
- Focus on constructive resolution
-
“Where do you see yourself in 5 years?”
- Technical leadership path
- Contributing to product development
Result: Selected! Package: ₹22 LPA (base) + stock + bonus = ~₹28 LPA total Location: Noida
Key Takeaways: Adobe focuses heavily on DSA. Practice LeetCode medium-hard problems. Be ready for follow-up questions. Show problem-solving depth, not just solutions.