🚀 Interview Experience – ACI Worldwide | Software Development Engineer (SDE)

Batch: 2027 | Branch: Computer Engineering (COMP)
Recruitment Mode: On-Campus
Total Rounds: 4
Online Assessment: September 8
Interviews: September 9–10

🏢 Process Snapshot

✅ Eligibility Criteria

• Eligible Branches: Computer Engineering (CE), Information Technology (IT), Artificial Intelligence and Data Science (AIDS), and Electronics and Telecommunication (ENTC)

• CGPA: 8.5 and above

• 10th & 12th: 60% and above

🛣️ Recruitment Journey

The recruitment process covered an online assessment, technical interviews, a technical-cum-managerial discussion, and an HR interview. The focus was not limited to coding; the interviewers also explored system design, project experience, decision-making, and the practical use of AI.

💻 Round 1: Online Assessment (OA)

The first round assessed programming fundamentals, core CS concepts, and basic problem-solving skills.

🖥️ Assessment Platform

• Platform: SEB (Safe Exam Browser)

• Important Note: At the time of this assessment, the platform was reported to work only on Windows. Check the current instructions before the test.

🧠 Topics Covered

1. General AI and GenAI

• Basic concepts of Artificial Intelligence and Generative AI

2. Core Computer Science Fundamentals

• Fundamental CS concepts

3. Java

• Output-based questions

• Multithreading concepts

4. Data Structures and Algorithms

• One relatively easy, queue-based coding question involving basic push and pop operations with specified input.

🎯 Preparation Tips

• Revise Java output-based questions and multithreading.

• Understand queue operations and practise basic implementation problems.

• Revise CS fundamentals and introductory AI/GenAI concepts.

• Check the required examination platform and system compatibility in advance.

👨‍💻 Round 2: Technical Interview – I

This round covered project discussions, programming concepts, DSA, SQL, and object-oriented programming. The interviewer also explored the practical use of AI during the internship.

👋 1. Introduction & Internship Discussion

1. Tell me about yourself.

2. How did you get your internship?

3. Have you used AI while building something during your internship?

1. How does JWT work?

2. What are pointers in C++?

3. Does Java have pointers? Explain the difference between pointers in C++ and references in Java.

🧩 3. DSA & Coding Questions

Question 1: Merge Two Sorted Arrays

• code

  1a1

  is a larger array with enough empty (
  code

  10

  ) spaces at the end to fit all elements of
  code

  1a2

  .

• code

  1a2

  is a smaller array containing some numbers.

• Your task is to insert all elements of

  code

  1a2

  into
  code

  1a1

  so that the final array is sorted in ascending order.

Task: Insert all elements of

1a2

1a1

Question 2: Combination Sum

You are given an array of candidates and a target. You can reuse each candidate any number of times. Return all combinations whose elements sum to the target.

Preparation focus: Backtracking, recursion, and the Coin Change / Combination Sum family of problems.

🗄️ 4. SQL & Database Concepts

Question 3: Top Three Salaries Across Departments

Given an

1Employee

Preparation focus:

• code

  1GROUP BY

  and
  code

  1HAVING

• Window functions such as

  code

  1DENSE_RANK()

• Partitioning results by department

Question 4: Second-Highest Salary

Write an SQL query to find the second-highest salary from an employee table.

Question 5: Rank Functions

Explain the difference between

1RANK()

1DENSE_RANK()

Question 6: Window Functions

What are window functions, and where are they used?

☕ 5. OOP & Development Tools

1. Explain method overloading and method overriding with examples.

2. Explain the four pillars of OOP.

3. What is the difference between Git and GitHub?

4. Do you have any questions for the interviewer?

🧠 Round 3: Technical + Managerial Interview

This round combined programming fundamentals, system design, scalability, graph problems, software development practices, and behavioural questions.

👋 1. Introduction & Background

1. Tell me about yourself.

2. Where are you from? Were you born and brought up in the same place?

1. What is the difference between Java and JavaScript?

2. Is JavaScript synchronous or asynchronous?

3. Is JavaScript an object-oriented language?

4. What does it mean for a programming language to be interpreted?

Question 1: Monolithic vs. Microservices

Explain monolithic and microservices architectures with examples.

Question 2: Layers of a System

What are the different layers of a system, and what responsibilities does each layer handle?

Question 3: Scaling from One User to Millions

Suppose an application grows from 1 user to 10, 100, 1,000, 10,000, 1 million, and eventually millions of users. How would you scale the application step by step?

Question 4: Load Balancing

Where would you use a load balancer, and why?

Question 5: Caching

Where would you introduce caching in an application?

Question 6: Country Dropdown

Suppose your application has a dropdown containing countries. How would you implement caching for this data?

🚇 4. Graphs & Shortest-Path Problems

Question 7: Shortest Path in a Metro Network

Imagine a large metro network with stations connected by routes. Every connection costs $1. Given a source station A and destination station B, find the shortest path.

Preparation focus: Model stations as graph nodes and connections as edges. Since every edge has equal cost, Breadth-First Search (BFS) can find a shortest path in an unweighted graph.

Question 8: Minimum Interchanges

Now suppose the metro routes have different colours: red, blue, green, and yellow. Changing from one colour to another increases the number of interchanges.

Find a route that minimizes interchanges while also minimizing travel cost.

1. What is the difference between Agile and the Waterfall model?

2. If you had to create a product, how would you make it secure?

1. What is your passion? Which technical domain would you like to pursue?

2. Where do you see yourself in the next five years?

🗣️ Round 4: HR Interview

The HR round focused on personality, collaboration, learning habits, ownership, handling uncertainty, and responsible AI usage.

1. Which book did you read most recently?

2. What are your key takeaways from that book?

3. Have you learned anything new outside technology recently?

4. Why did you choose to learn that non-technical skill?

5. Are you learning any new technology currently?

6. Your colleague proposes Solution A, while you believe Solution B is better. The manager supports Solution A. How would you convince your manager?

7. What would you do if a colleague repeatedly disagreed with you?

8. What if the person disagreeing with you were your senior?

9. Why has your internship been impactful for you?

10. What percentage of your work was contributed by you versus AI?

11. Which parts of a project would you use AI for, and which parts would you avoid using AI for?

12. Tell me about a failure you faced and how you overcame it.

13. Is there anything you could have done better but didn't?

14. If you have uncertain information about your project, how would you manage and proceed?

15. How do you handle uncertainty?

16. If a problem has no obvious solution, how would you approach it?

17. Is there an academic or other achievement you would like to share?

18. If I called your internship colleague and asked them to name two strengths of yours and one thing they find frustrating about you, what would they say?