LinkedIn - SRE Intern Interview Experience | Off-campus | August 2021 [Offer-Accepted]

My status during the recruitment procedure:

Status: Pre-final year (3rd), Thapar Institute of Engineering and Technology 
Position: SRE Intern
Location: Bangalore, India
Month: August-September, 2021
Applied at: LinkedIn Easy Apply

Rounds Conducted

1. Hackerrank Online Test
2. Technical Interview- I (SRE Phone Screen - CS Fundamentals)
3. Technical Interview – II (Service Design & Architecture)
4. Host Manager Round

Round 1 - Hackerrank Online Test

Date & Time - 27th August 2021, 6pm IST
Test Duration - 120 mins

Test Syllabus:

1. Unix
2. Operating Systems
3. Databases & SQL
4. HTTP & Networking Fundamentals (basically Computer Networks)
5. Coding

Test format:

1. 26 MCQs
2. 2 Coding questions
3. 2 Database Queries - 4 languages allowed (MySQL, Oracle, tsql, db2)

My take for this round:
The MCQs were easy, and the coding questions were Easy-Medium. The Database queries were of Medium Level.

Round 2 - Technical Interview- I (CS Fundamentals)

Date & Time - 6th September 2021, 11:30am IST
Interview Duration - 60 mins

• One interviewer joined the zoom call. To begin with, she introduced herself and then I followed with my introduction.
• The interviewer made sure that I was not anxious and that I was ready for the interview. She asked me about the subjects already taught in my college.
• The interview was very interactive and smooth.
• Questions revolved around the following topics:
  1. Operating Systems & Unix
  2. DBMS
  3. Computer Networks
• The interview involved questions on many topics in the subjects, beginning with easy-level questions. The level of questions was raised gradually during the interview.
• Some questions required in-depth knowledge about how things work. For example, I explained the lifecycle of a request, from the browser involving the five layers of the TCP/IP model till a response is received.
• In the end, I asked some questions about the interview and LinkedIn.

Round 3 - Technical Interview – II (Service Design & Architecture)

In simple words, System Design.

Date & Time - 6th September 2021, 2:00pm IST
Interview Duration - 60 mins

• This interview has held on the same day as Round - 1. This interview had no right or wrong answers as there could be many ways of doing specific tasks.
• An interviewer joined the call, and we began similarly with our introductions.
• We first reviewed my resume, and then I elaborated more on my skills and experiences.
• We also discussed some of my projects and how we could scale them.
• Later, the interviewer asked me about system design concepts like horizontal and vertical scaling, monitoring, etc.
• I specifically remember one question: "There is a file of size 1 TB which needs to be transferred to 10k machines. How can this be done efficiently, keeping in mind that there can be network failures, machines going out of disk space, etc."

Round 4 - Host Manager Round

Date & Time - 9th September 2021, 11:00am IST
Interview Duration - 60 mins

• The interviewer was a Site Reliability Engineering Manager.
• He opened my LinkedIn profile and Resume and asked me about my previous work and experiences. He tried to understand my background and why I did certain things the way I did them.
• It was a conversational round, and there were no right or wrong answers.

I received the offer to join LinkedIn on 15th September 2021.

Resources:

1. What is SRE?
2. LinkedIn School of SRE
3. System Design - Gaurav Sen
4. Computer Networks - My notes from Google Course
5. Operating System - NESO Academy or Gate-Smashers
6. Linux
7. DBMS & SQL