Alkira Software Engineering Networking Role Interview Experience (2024)

Role Requirements: Strong proficiency in C, networking, and systems fundamentals.

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Round 1 Coding Assessment (2 Hours)** *

Format: Timer-based coding problems where each problem auto-submitt

Role Requirements: Strong proficiency in C, networking, and systems fundamentals.

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Round 1 Coding Assessment (2 Hours)** *

Format: Timer-based coding problems where each problem auto-submitted upon time expiry. *

Constraint: All solutions, including DSA problems, had to be written in C. *

Evaluation: An AI interviewed the candidate regarding the best-scoring solution, requiring an explanation of the code and answering follow-up questions.

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Round 2 VP Round (1 Hour)** * Focus on cultural fit, company vision, and role alignment.

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Round 3 Technical Round – Chief Architect (20 Minutes)** *

Focus: High-level architectural discussion regarding feature designs from previous experience, emphasizing tradeoffs and reasoning.

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Round 4 Technical Round – Hiring Manager (1 Hour)** *

Coding: 1. Remove duplicates from a sorted linked list. 2.

Follow-up: Delete all occurrences of elements that repeat (remove all duplicates entirely). *

Threading & Mutexes: *

Problem: Two functions incrementing and decrementing a shared variable 1,000 times. *

Discussion:

Explanation of race conditions, expected output without locks, and deep dive into threading and memory management. *

Bit Manipulation: 1. Check if a number is a power of 2. 2. Count set bits for a given number.

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Round 5 Technical Round – Distinguished Engineer (1.5 Hours)** *

Threading & Debugging: * Debugged C code to explain why count++ is not atomic. * Identified and resolved a deadlock scenario. * Discussion on Compare-and-Swap (CAS), memory ordering, and compiler flags. *

Systems: Brief exploration of VPP/DPDK concepts. *

Coding: Designed and implemented a fully functional lockless circular queue using a buffer and atomic head/tail indices.

Outcome: Successfully cleared all technical evaluations. However, the application was placed on a waitlist due to a lack of specific DPDK experience, despite possessing a networking background.