PhonePe SDE-1 on-campus — the whole process in about six hours

Background

The entire process wrapped up in a single day — roughly six hours across four rounds.

Round-by-round

Online assessment

Four fairly challenging problems focused on dynamic programming and graphs. I fully solved one and passed partial test cases on a second.

Technical round 1

A one-on-one, pen-and-paper style round with two problems in the medium to medium-hard range — one involving prefix/suffix logic, the other a graph problem solvable with BFS.

Technical round 2

Similar format, but the difficulty stepped up again — dynamic programming plus another BFS-based problem.

HR round

The longest round, over an hour, covering:

• A deep dive into a MERN-stack project including backend architecture and data flow
• Core CS subjects, particularly Operating Systems (deadlocks, synchronisation) and DBMS
• Behavioural questions on leadership experience, why PhonePe specifically, and how I'd approach my first two weeks

Verdict

Selected.