1. Company and Role

• Company: PhonePe

• Role: Intern+FTE

• Batch/Year of Graduation: 2027

• Branch: CE

2. Application Process

• How did you apply? On-campus

• Timeline:

  • Online Assessment Date: 03/08/2026

  • Interview Dates: 04/08/2026

  • Offer Date: 04/08/2026

3. Interview Rounds

Round 1: DSA Round 1

• Type: DSA

• Description: 2 Leetcode Hard qs were asked

  • Example Questions:

    1. https://leetcode.com/problems/russian-doll-envelopes/description/

    2. https://leetcode.com/problems/minimum-time-to-reach-target-with-limited-power/description/

• Difficulty Level: Medium-Hard

• Your Experience: For the first qs, I had solved it before but couldnt remember the optimal approach. So started with a brute-force O(n³) DP then optimized it to O(n²) and finally reached the O(n log n) approach with some help from the interviewer. Was asked to write the code on paper and dry run it on a test case.

  For the second qs, luckily I had upsolved the exact same problem a few days back so I was able to directly give the optimal Dijkstra + additional state approach. Again was asked to write the code on paper and dry run it on a test case.

Round 2: HR Round

• Type: HR

• Description: This round was mostly based on my resume. He started by asking about my work experience and the project I worked on during my internship. Then he moved on to my projects where he asked me to draw and explain the architecture and also discussed the schema design.

  He asked about the motivation behind the project and some basic design decisions (like why MongoDB over SQL etc.) Later, he asked about my RBI hackathon experience (mentioned in my resume) and the project we built.

  Towards the end, he asked a few simple behavioral questions and then wrapped up the interview.

• Difficulty Level: Easy

• Your Experience: Just ensure that you are thorough with whatever you are including in your resume.

Round 3: DSA Round 2

• Type: DSA

• Description: 3 Leetcode Hard qs were asked

  • Example Questions:

    1. https://leetcode.com/problems/greatest-common-divisor-traversal/description/

    2. https://leetcode.com/problems/largest-color-value-in-a-directed-graph/description/

    3. https://leetcode.com/problems/partition-array-into-two-arrays-to-minimize-sum-difference/description/

• Difficulty Level: Medium-Hard

• Your Experience: For the first qs, I initially came up with a DSU + factor based approach. With the interviewer’s help was able to optimize it further using prime factors. Had to write the entire code on paper including the DSU implementation and then dry run a test case.

  For the second qs, I came up with a Topo Sort + DP based approach and made some minor optimizations with the interviewer’s help.

  For the third question, I knew from the constraints that it was a Meet in the middle problem but hadn’t studied the algorithm before. So I tried a DP based approach for a while, but we ran out of time and had to stop there.

4. Overall Experience and Tips

• What to prepare? DSA from Love Babbar/Striver then consistent contests and upsolving (eg from TLE Eliminators youtube channel). For CP would suggest random rating wise qs on Codeforces or CP-31 sheet. Also CSES is another good platform

• Tips for Aspirants: Try to prioritize DSA over CP and always communicate with the interviewer about the approach in your mind. Including him in your thought process helps a lot.

• Verdict: Selected :)