The Coding Interview Guide for Software Engineers in India (2026)
Everything a software engineer in India needs for coding rounds: how online assessments, DSA rounds, machine coding and CS fundamentals differ by company type, a 10-week preparation plan, and how to perform in the room.
Most coding-interview advice online is written for a US FAANG loop. If you're interviewing in India, the shape is different. Service companies screen at huge volume with aptitude tests. Product companies add a machine coding round that US guides barely mention. Even Google and Microsoft India loops differ in pacing from their US versions.
This guide is the hub for everything coding-round related on this blog. Read it top to bottom once, then use the links to go deep on each part.
The four kinds of coding round
| Round | What happens | Where it's common |
|---|---|---|
| Online assessment (OA) | 60–120 minutes on HackerRank, HackerEarth, Mettl or the company's own platform. Usually 2–4 problems, sometimes with MCQs and aptitude. | Almost everyone, especially for freshers and high-volume hiring |
| Live DSA round | 45–60 minutes with an engineer on a shared editor. One or two problems, discussed aloud. | Product companies, FAANG, fintech |
| Machine coding / LLD | 60–120 minutes building a small working system with clean classes. Sometimes take-home. | Flipkart, PhonePe, Swiggy, Razorpay, Uber India, many startups |
| CS fundamentals | Questions on OOP, DBMS, operating systems, networks, often mixed into a technical round. | Service companies, freshers everywhere |
Senior roles add a system design round, which is covered in its own guide.
How the loop differs by company type
Service companies (TCS, Infosys, Wipro, Accenture, Cognizant, Capgemini)
- Big online test with aptitude, verbal, reasoning and one or two coding problems.
- A technical interview on your resume projects, OOP and DBMS basics, and a simple problem.
- An HR round.
- Higher-paying tracks (TCS Digital/Prime, Infosys Specialist Programmer, Accenture Advanced, Cognizant GenC Next) add harder coding.
Details per company: TCS, Infosys and Wipro, Accenture, Cognizant GenC, Capgemini.
Indian product companies and unicorns
- An OA with two or three medium problems.
- One or two live DSA rounds.
- A machine coding round, often the deciding one.
- A hiring-manager round mixing design and behavioral questions.
See Flipkart, Razorpay and Swiggy and PhonePe.
FAANG and global companies in India
- An OA or phone screen.
- Three to five onsite-style rounds: DSA, system design for SDE-2 and up, and behavioral.
- Amazon weights its Leadership Principles heavily.
See Google India, Microsoft India and what FAANG loops look like.
Choosing a language
Pick the language you can write fastest without bugs, and stick to it. Every major company accepts Java, C++ and Python.
- Python: shortest code, great for OAs, slower for heavy loops.
- Java: verbose but predictable; the default for machine coding at many product companies.
- C++: fastest and strong STL; preferred by competitive programmers.
We compare them in detail in Python vs Java vs C++ for coding interviews.
The DSA syllabus, by pattern
Interviewers rarely invent new problems. They pick from a small set of patterns. Learn to recognise the pattern, and most problems reduce to a template.
| Pattern | Typical signal in the problem | Deep dive |
|---|---|---|
| Two pointers | Sorted array, pairs, in-place changes | Sliding window and two pointers |
| Sliding window | "Longest/shortest subarray or substring with…" | Sliding window and two pointers |
| Binary search | Sorted input, or "minimum value that satisfies…" | Binary search patterns |
| Graph traversal | Grids, dependencies, connected components | Graph patterns: BFS, DFS, topological sort |
| Dynamic programming | "Number of ways", "min cost", overlapping choices | DP interview patterns |
| Heaps | "Top k", "kth largest", merging sorted lists | 15 DSA patterns |
| Backtracking | "All combinations/permutations" | 15 DSA patterns |
| Intervals | Meetings, merging ranges | 15 DSA patterns |
The full list with templates is in 15 DSA patterns that solve most coding interview questions. If you're choosing a problem list, read Blind 75 vs NeetCode 150 vs Striver's SDE sheet.
Machine coding: the round most people skip
Machine coding asks you to build a working mini-system in 60–120 minutes: an expense splitter, a parking lot, a movie-booking service, a game. Interviewers grade structure, extensibility and whether it runs, not clever algorithms.
The workflow that works:
- 10 minutes on requirements. Ask what's in scope, and write it down.
- 10 minutes on entities. List classes, their fields and the interfaces where behaviour will vary.
- 40 minutes on the happy path. Get something running end to end.
- 15 minutes on edge cases, such as invalid input, double actions and empty states.
- The last minutes on a demo that runs a few scenarios.
Start with the LLD and machine coding guide, then work through the walkthroughs:
- Design Splitwise
- Design a parking lot
- Design BookMyShow
- Design Snake and Ladder
- Design an elevator system
CS fundamentals that still get asked
Freshers especially get a few minutes of theory. Know these cold:
- OOP: the four pillars, abstract class vs interface, overloading vs overriding, SOLID.
- DBMS: normalisation (1NF–3NF), ACID, indexes, joins, transactions and isolation levels.
- Operating systems: process vs thread, deadlock conditions, scheduling, paging, virtual memory.
- Networks: what happens when you type a URL, TCP vs UDP, HTTP vs HTTPS, DNS.
- SQL: joins, GROUP BY with HAVING, window functions for experienced candidates. See SQL interview questions.
Experienced candidates get language-specific depth instead: see Java questions for 3–5 years' experience and React questions for experienced developers.
A 10-week preparation plan
Assumes 1.5–2 hours on weekdays and longer sessions on weekends. Compress it if your interview is sooner.
| Weeks | Focus | Output |
|---|---|---|
| 1–2 | Arrays, strings, hashing, two pointers, sliding window | 30–40 easy/medium problems; a notes file of templates |
| 3–4 | Binary search, stacks/queues, linked lists, heaps | 30 problems; start timing yourself |
| 5–6 | Trees, graphs (BFS/DFS, topological sort) | 30 problems; explain each solution aloud |
| 7–8 | Dynamic programming, backtracking, intervals | 25 problems; re-solve 10 old ones unaided |
| 9 | Machine coding: 3 timed problems | Runnable code + self-review against the LLD checklist |
| 10 | Mock rounds, CS fundamentals, company research | 4–6 timed mocks; fix the weakest pattern |
Revisit problems you got wrong after three days and again after a week. Re-solving beats new solving for retention.
How to perform in a live coding round
The candidates who get offers aren't always the fastest coders. They make their thinking easy to follow.
- Restate the problem and confirm input sizes and edge cases.
- Say a brute-force approach first, with its complexity. It shows you can always produce something.
- Improve it aloud: name the pattern ("this is a sliding window because…").
- Code cleanly with clear names. Talk while you write, but don't narrate every keystroke.
- Dry-run a small example before saying you're done.
- State time and space complexity without being asked.
We go deeper in how to crack a DSA coding round.
Stuck mid-round on a pattern you know but can't place?
InterviewPilot reads the coding problem off your screen and streams an approach, code and complexity analysis to an overlay that screen shares don't capture. Pick the DSA or machine-coding round focus and answers stay in that format for the whole session.
Online assessments: platform notes
Most OAs run on HackerRank, HackerEarth, Mettl, CodeSignal or CoderPad. A few practical points:
- Read all problems first; solve the one you're surest of before the hardest one.
- Partial test cases usually earn partial credit, so submit something.
- Watch the input format; many lost points are parsing bugs.
- Many platforms record tab switches and webcam. Know what's monitored before you start: see what HackerRank checks and how proctoring works.
Mistakes that cost offers
- Coding before clarifying. Two minutes of questions saves twenty of rework.
- Silence. The interviewer can't give hints to someone who isn't talking.
- Skipping the dry run. Off-by-one errors are the most common bug in the room.
- Ignoring machine coding for product companies.
- Memorising solutions. Interviewers twist problems slightly to catch this.
Where to go next
- New to all of this? Start with 15 DSA patterns.
- Interviewing at a product company? Do the machine coding guide next.
- Senior role? Read the system design interview guide.
- Want company specifics? See interview processes at Indian tech companies.
Frequently asked questions
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