PhonePe SDE Intern + FTE — 800 applicants, 29 shortlisted

## Eligibility & online assessment
Open to CS/IT branches with a CGPA cutoff of 9.35+.

The OA saw about 800 applicants, of which 29 were shortlisted. It ran 90 minutes with four **LeetCode Hard**-level problems. The bar was roughly 16 of 40 total test cases across the set — full solutions on every problem weren't necessary to make the cut.

## Round-by-round

### Round 1 — DSA
Two problems: one graph-based, another a tree scenario needing a **binary lifting** approach. The interviewer wanted me to start with brute force before working toward something optimised, rather than jumping straight to the best approach.

### Round 2 — Technical deep dive
Difficulty stepped up with two harder problems touching **binary search** and graph patterns. As in Round 1, the interviewer cared more about how clearly I communicated my problem-solving process than about arriving at the optimal solution immediately.

### Round 3 — HR & behavioural
A detailed discussion of my main personal project (an AI-based learning platform), past internship experience, and a basic database schema design exercise around a social-media-style scenario.

## Verdict
**Selected.**