Blinkit · Junior — 3 rounds, DSA + system design + cultural fit, offer accepted

Round 1 — DSA

I had 1 hour to solve 2 problems:

• Rotten Oranges (classic problem)
• LIS variant (a tricky non-standard version of the longest increasing subsequence problem)

I solved both and moved forward.

Round 2 — System Design & Coding

The first 10 minutes covered theoretical concepts:

• Microservices
• Event-driven systems
• Databases

Then the interviewer asked me to write a working cURL command to fetch all transactions for a user by user_id. I solved it partially due to time constraints and ran into some PostgreSQL connectivity issues. The interviewer reviewed my code, asked follow-up questions about databases, and had me write some SQL queries. I felt the feedback was slightly negative, but I passed and advanced.

Round 3 — Cultural Fit

This was a discussion-heavy round (originally 30 minutes, extended to 1 hour) covering:

• My 1 year of previous work experience
• Lessons learned and their applicability to Blinkit
• Comfort with switching to a new tech stack
• Adjustment to a new environment

After the interviewer finished their questions, I asked about company work culture, strategy, and expectations for SDE-1s. We had a great conversation about the company.

The interviewer ended by discussing compensation and asking about my joining date. I thought I was selected, but they said they'd evaluate all three rounds before deciding.

Outcome: I received the offer 3 days later and accepted!