Interview Experience at CultFit (SDE Summer Intern – Pre-Final Year)

Overview

I interviewed with CultFit for the Software Development Engineer (SDE) Summer Intern role (3-month internship) for pre-final year students through campus placements.

The process consisted of 3 rounds and was highly focused on DSA, implementation depth, and practical problem-solving ability.

Round 1: Online Assessment (HackerEarth)

The first round was an Online Assessment conducted on HackerEarth.

The test consisted of 2 coding questions.
Difficulty level: Medium to Hard.
Required strong understanding of data structures and algorithms.
Efficient and optimized solutions were necessary to clear the round.

Both problems required careful edge case handling and optimal time complexity. I was able to solve both questions within the time limit and moved to the next round.

Round 2: Technical Interview (DSA Round – 1 Hour)

This was a 1-hour DSA-focused technical interview.

At the beginning, the interviewer mentioned:

There would be 2 questions.
They expected complete implementation of at least one question.
This included explaining the approach, writing clean code, generating test cases, and dry-running the solution.

Question 1: DFS + Modified LCA Variant

The first question involved DFS traversal combined with a modified version of a Lowest Common Ancestor (LCA)-type problem.

Difficulty: Medium to Hard
Required strong understanding of recursion and tree traversal.
Emphasis on correctness, clarity, and edge-case handling.

I was able to:

Clearly explain the approach.
Implement the complete solution.
Generate and test multiple edge cases.
Dry-run the code with the interviewer.

Question 2: Scheduling Optimization Problem

The second problem was based on a scheduling/optimization (greedy-style) algorithm.

I derived and explained the optimal approach.
Discussed time and space complexity.
However, only around 15 minutes were left, so I couldn’t fully implement the solution.

Overall, the discussion was interactive and went well.

Round 3: HR + SRE Discussion (30 Minutes)

The third round was labeled as an HR round but was conducted by a Senior SRE Engineer.

The round included:

Deep discussion about my resume projects.
Questions around design decisions and technical choices.
Situational and behavioral questions.

I was able to confidently answer all resume-related technical questions.

Unexpected Live Machine Coding (Golang Concurrency)

Toward the end of the interview, she unexpectedly asked me to:

Implement a concurrent solution in Golang to read and count characters.

This was surprising because:

It was introduced near the end of the interview.
It required writing concurrent Go code live.
Only about 5 minutes were left.

I was able to:

Explain a basic concurrent approach using goroutines and channels.
Outline how work could be divided and aggregated safely.

However, I did not get enough time to fully implement it.

Result

Only 4 students were selected from the entire campus hiring process for the SDE Summer Intern role.

Unfortunately, I was not selected.

It was disappointing, but also a strong learning experience — especially in being prepared for unexpected live machine coding rounds.

Key Learnings

Always be prepared for live coding, even in HR rounds.
Practice concurrency problems in Golang (goroutines, channels, sync primitives).
Manage time effectively across multiple questions.
Campus placements are highly competitive — resilience is important.

Final Thoughts

Even though I wasn’t selected, the experience strengthened my understanding of DSA depth, implementation clarity, and Golang concurrency fundamentals.

Every interview is preparation for the next opportunity 🚀

CultFit - SDE Summer Intern Interview Experience