Goldman Sachs Software Engineer Interview Guide

Candidates have to initially appear for an online coding test on the hacker rank platform. The test consists of 3 questions, and candidates are allowed 120 minutes to complete the test. 

On clearing the HackerRank online test, you will be set up for a 30-minute telephonic interview with the recruiter/hiring manager. Here, the interviewer is going to assess whether your experience and skill sets are a good match for the job you’ve applied for. In other words, your cultural and experiential fit for the role & company will be tested. Most of the questions are going to be based on your previous experience/resume. So, it will be useful to be thorough with every word on your resume. Make it a point to keep answers short, crisp & structured. Some questions regarding your motivation for the role and company might also be asked. So, prepare some good points for these questions beforehand, especially the expected "Why Goldman Sachs?" or "Why do you think you are a good fit for the job?"

Once you have cleared the Initial Screen, you will proceed to the CoderPad Phone Screen. This is the technical round of the interview process. The Coderpad phone screen is a live coding round with a Goldman Sachs Software engineer interview. telephonic interview round with a Goldman Sachs Software Engineer. It is a 1-hour interview, and you will get to answer multiple questions.  

Most of the questions test your OOP concepts, algorithms understanding, and coding skills.

Most asked questions in the CoderPad Phone Screen

• Write a function to merge two sorted arrays.
• Write a Java program to count the number of occurrences of each number in a series of numbers.
• Write a function to find all the permutations of a string
• Write a function to find the missing number in a given integer array of 1 to 100?

On clearing the phone screen, you will get a call for the onsite round. The onsite round for the Software Engineer role at Goldman Sachs consists of 4 interviews, each being an hour long. 

The first three interviews are technical while the 3rd and last one is a behavioural interview. Each of the technical interviews is 45 minutes long, while the behaviour interview lasts for 1 hour.

Technical Interviews

The technical interviews last for about 2 hours, done in two sittings. These are conducted by Goldman Sachs' Senior Software Engineers. Here are the 3 rounds of the  technical interview:

• SDLC 
• System Design 
• Coding 

Let’s know more about each of these rounds in a little more detail:

SDLC Round:

SDLC stands for Softwareevelopment Life Cycle. Software developers have to be conversant in the different stages of development of a software product in order to build a robust and glitch-free software.

Most asked questions in the SDLC interview round

• Can you tell me the difference between Regression testing and Retesting?
• Differentiate between unit, integration and system testing
• What do you understand by the Defect Life Cycle?
• Explain the difference between SDLC and STLC.

System Design round

The system design round is conducted by a software engineer at Goldman Sachs. Here, your front end and back end design skills will be tested. Interviewers will also look to assess your knowledge in scalability and distributed systems.

Most asked questions in the System Design round:

• Design a project of candidate/recruiter management system in which one candidate will be assigned to only one recruiter but one recruiter can have multiple candidates.
• How would you explain the concept of lower latency interaction?
• Design a ride sharing service such as Ola.
• What do you understand by High Availability Design?
• Can you tell us the differences between continuous integration, continuous delivery, and continuous deployment?
• What do you understand by Shared Nothing Architecture? How does it scale?
• Design a real time chat application end to end including all the architecture, code design pattern, communication system and database.
• How will you design a database system for a supermarket?

Coding round

This round is conducted by a software engineer from Goldman Sachs. The coding round will test your general programming skills in C/C++, Java etc. Primarily, the interviewer lays emphasis on logic, and is flexible with the choice of programming language. Questions may involve writing a piece of code for a problem, or debugging a given piece of code.

Most asked questions in the Coding Round

• Write a function to find the nth element from the end in a linked list in one pass?
• Write a program to add numbers present in a String, example : Gl123a45ssd908oo6r, so the program should give 123 + 45 + 908 + 6 = 1082 as the result.
• You have been given a character array. Write a function to calculate the minimum number of jumps from the 1st alphabet to reach the last alphabet; keeping these restraints: From a given character, you can either: 1. Jump to the adjacent character 2. Jump to the same character positioned in a different place.
• Write a programme to calculate the angle between hour hand and minute hand.

Behavioural Round

The behavioural interview is 1-hour long, and is  conducted by senior managers from Goldman Sachs. This interview is designed to test a candidate's motivation for the role, leadership skills, and how good a fit they will be in the company. Questions are mostly situation-based. At the end of the interview, the candidate may ask questions or doubts regarding the role/job responsibilities or company.

Most asked questions in the Behavioural round

• What drives you  to work for Goldman Sachs?
• Why do you want to pursue software engineering as a career?
• What challenges have you faced in your career so far, and how did you overcome them?

• Focus on scenario-based system design questions as these are asked often.
• Revise SDLC concepts as one round is exclusively dedicated to it.
• Revise the theory portion of static parts of concepts in sufficient depth as interviewers love to deep dive in the onsite round. Special focus should be on OOPS concepts.
• Follow the think-out-loud approach.