Chegg Interview Experience | Senior Software Engineer
Question Details
Chegg Inc is an MNC set up in Delhi with headquarters based out in Santa Clara, California. It's one of the best workplaces to work in NCR and hires from reputed colleges/...
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Chegg Inc is an MNC set up in Delhi with headquarters based out in Santa Clara, California. It's one of the best workplaces to work in NCR and hires from reputed colleges/companies. The interview level is medium. Chegg Inc: https://www.linkedin.com/login?session_redirect=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.linkedin.com%2Fcompany%2Fchegg-inc-%2F%26nbsp I have 6 years of experience in Java. So the below experience is for a Senior Software Engineer profile.
Round 1 I had an online screening round over Skype. They give some real-life problems, and we have to write production-ready code in 30 minutes over collab. Emphasis is on problem-solving and using the right data structures. The complexity of the problem is medium. I was asked below question: There are 10 horses in a race with 5 checkpoints (C1, C2, C3, C4, C5). We have to design a method that takes in input as Checkpoint no, and we have to return the order in which horses crossed that particular checkpoint. The interviewer was quite friendly and patient. Round 2 (F2F): Design Metro LLD. I was asked to design LLD for a Metro System. Design model and APIs which can return me the total fare of a journey, available points in the smart card, whether a recharge is required and similar conditions were provided. The focus was on entities' design and SOLID principles. Write code to demonstrate the Builder Access pattern. Some questions around various Design patterns used. Knowledge-based questions on JAVA, Rest APIs. Knowledge of Graphql was a bonus to me. Round 3 (F2F): This round focussed on Data structures and HLD Write code to design a stack which includes Min, push and pop operations in O1 Left view of the tree Write code to implement LRU cache. How will you modify it to get the best performance in a multithreaded environment? Questions around use-cases, where to use synchronous vs asynchronous systems. Concepts around consistent hashing. Round 4 (Hiring Manager) : Here the focus will be on HLD and behavior. Different use cases can be given to design a system Design a security system. Design a scoreboard like a dashboard showing the highest number of bookings for trains/hotels. Both of the HLD questions had concepts using Kafka queues, SQL vs NoSQL. So just focus on using the right technology and solution. If you want to use a particular solution, you should be able to answer why you feel so. Then there were a lot of behavioral questions. Have you ever led a team? How do you handle a conflict with team How do you handle a conflict with manager Example of ownership. And I was told on the same day that interview went positive. And got feedback from HR within 2 days. The overall experience was good. People were very friendly and professional. HR has already booked slots beforehand. So there was no extra waiting. After a week of negotiations, the final offer was rolled out.
About This Question
This is a reported interview question from a chegg interview for a data eng role (senior level) during the phone screen round reported in 2025.
It covers the following topics: Ml, Oop, Trees, Sql, Stack Queue, Networking, System Design, Stack .
Difficulty rating: Medium
Topics
About Chegg Interview Reports
This question was reported by a candidate who interviewed at Chegg. LeakCode aggregates interview reports from 10+ sources, including 1Point3Acres, Glassdoor, LeetCode Discuss, Blind, Reddit, Indeed, and Nowcoder. Each report is translated where necessary, deduplicated against existing entries, and tagged by company, role, round type, and reporting date.
Use this question as one calibration data point, not a memorization target. Companies typically rotate their question pools every 2-4 months; the exact wording of a 2024 question may differ from what you encounter today. The underlying pattern, difficulty level, and follow-up depth at Chegg are the higher-signal extractions to take from this report.
For broader preparation context, the Chegg interview process typically includes a recruiter screen, one or two technical phone screens, and a 4-5 round on-site loop covering coding, system design (at L4+ levels), and behavioral. Reports tagged on LeakCode show the round-by-round distribution and typical difficulty calibration. To browse questions filtered by round type and seniority, use the company hub linked above.
How To Practice This Type of Question
Solve similar problems on LeetCode under timed conditions (25-35 minutes per medium difficulty). The goal is pattern recognition: recognize the underlying technique (sliding window, two-pointer, BFS, memoized recursion, etc.) within 60-90 seconds of reading. Strong candidates verbalize their hypothesis out loud before coding, then iterate based on feedback. Weak candidates dive into implementation immediately, lose time on the wrong approach, and run out of time for follow-ups.
Companies update their question pools every 2-4 months. The exact wording of any given question may have been retired by the time you interview. Focus your prep on the pattern, not the specific problem. The patterns that appear in Chegg reports consistently are the ones worth investing in; one-off niche problems are not.
During Your Chegg Round
Apply the standard interview round template: clarify requirements (2-3 minutes), state your approach out loud and confirm direction with the interviewer (3-5 minutes), code with narration (15-25 minutes), test with concrete examples including edge cases (5 minutes), discuss optimization or trade-offs if time permits (5 minutes). This template is universally accepted across FAANG and adjacent companies; deviating from it produces weaker interviewer feedback signal.
The single most predictive failure mode in Chegg reports tagged "no hire": not asking clarifying questions. Interviewers are explicitly trained to weight this. Strong candidates ask 3-5 clarifying questions even on problems that look obvious; weak candidates dive into code immediately. The clarifying-question check is often the first signal recorded in the interviewer's written notes.