Frontend Interview Experience at Wishlink (SDE II)

Overview

This document details a frontend engineering interview experience at Wishlink for the Software Development Engineer II (SDE II) role. The interview process comprised three distinct rounds designed to assess the candidate's proficiency in JavaScript, React-based machine coding, and fundamental data structures and algorithms.

Interview Rounds

Round 1: Advanced JavaScript and Coding

This round commenced with introductions and a thorough review of the candidate's resume, lasting approximately 20 minutes. The discussion then shifted to performance optimizations, security considerations, server-side rendering (SSR), and search engine optimization (SEO) techniques.

The candidate engaged in a discussion of core JavaScript concepts, including hoisting, closures, the event loop, promises, and objects. They were tasked with solving approximately seven to eight code snippets related to these concepts.

A problem-solving exercise required the candidate to compress a given string. For example, the input aabbbbcc should be transformed to a2b4c2. The candidate was expected to handle various test cases and achieve a space complexity of O(1).

Round 2: Machine Coding in React

The candidate was challenged to build a Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) system using React. The implementation required custom routes, along with authentication and authorization mechanisms. The expectation was that the code should be production-ready and scalable. As the round progressed, additional requirements were introduced, such as implementing redirections in the absence of required roles for specific routes.

Round 3: Data Structures & Algorithms

The candidate was tasked with designing a Dice class with N faces, where each face has a unique value. The class required methods to increment the face value, decrement the face value, and simulate a dice roll with equal probability for each face. The constraint was that all operations must be performed with O(1) space complexity, with the number of faces N ranging from 0 to 1000 (0 ≤ N ≤ 1000).

Key Takeaways

This interview experience highlights the importance of a strong foundation in core JavaScript concepts, practical experience with React-based machine coding, and a solid understanding of fundamental data structures and algorithms for frontend engineering roles at Wishlink. The emphasis on production-ready code and scalability during the machine coding round underscores the company's focus on building robust and maintainable systems.