Cisco - Software Engineer

The first round was an online assessment conducted on HackerRank. There were 5 coding questions to be solved within a limited time frame. The difficulty level was structured as 2 easy, 2 medium, and 1 hard problem. The questions were similar to standard LeetCode style problems.

Topics covered included arrays, strings, trees, recursion, and basic data structures. The hard problem required an optimized solution and careful edge case handling. Time management played a key role in clearing this round. Writing clean and efficient code with proper complexity analysis was important.

This round was focused on backend development skills. I was asked to design and implement an MVC based Spring Boot service. The interviewer wanted me to explain how I would structure the project including controllers, services, repositories, and database integration.

There was a deep discussion on: • Why MVC architecture is used • How REST APIs are structured • Exception handling strategies • Validation mechanisms • Logging and monitoring • How to scale the application for high traffic

The interviewer also asked about performance optimization techniques, caching strategies, and how to improve response time under load. This round tested both practical coding ability and system thinking.

This round combined backend fundamentals and coding. I was asked several conceptual questions about Spring Boot including dependency injection, bean lifecycle, annotations, and configuration management.

Since my profile included some front end exposure, basic questions about client server communication and API integration were also asked.

Additionally, I was given one medium level coding problem to solve live. The focus was on approach clarity, optimization, and explaining thought process clearly while coding. The interviewer paid attention to how I handled edge cases and whether I considered time and space complexity.

This round was purely DSA focused. I was given two coding problems.

The first problem was easy to medium level and tested fundamental data structure knowledge.

The second problem was medium level and related to LRU Cache implementation and Heap or Priority Queue concepts. I was expected to explain the working mechanism of LRU cache, how to achieve O(1) time complexity, and why certain data structures were chosen.

The interviewer also asked follow up questions regard

The final round was conducted by the Hiring Manager followed by HR discussion. This round was more conversational and focused on behavioral and project based questions.

I was asked to explain my major academic and personal projects in detail. The manager went deep into architecture decisions, challenges faced, debugging scenarios, and how I handled teamwork situations.

Behavioral questions included: • Describe a challenging situation and how you handled it • How do you manage conflicts in a team • Why do you want to join Cisco • Where do you see yourself in the next few years

This round assessed communication skills, cultural fit, and overall mindset.