Swiggy SDE-1 Interview Experience
If you’re aiming for an SDE-1 role at Swiggy, you’re signing up for more than just DSA questions. You’re interviewing at a company that runs one of India’s largest hyper-local logistics platforms, ships real-time features to millions of users, and cares deeply about values like “Consumer Comes First”, “Bias for Action”, and “Always be Curious”.
Over the last couple of years, multiple CodeKerdos learners and mentors have gone through Swiggy’s SDE-1 / Associate SDE loops—some got offers, some didn’t, but all of them shared very detailed notes.
This blog focuses on SDE-1 backend / full-stack style roles, but most of it applies to closely related titles like Associate SDE as well.
1. High-level Swiggy SDE-1 process
2. Round 1 – Online Coding Assessment
3. Round 2 – Data Structures & Problem Solving (Technical)
4. Round 3 – Machine Coding / Low-Level Design
5. Round 4 – Hiring Manager + Culture Fit
6. Behavioural Question Themes (and what they’re really testing)
7. How to Prepare for Swiggy SDE-1 (Roadmap)
1. High-level Swiggy SDE-1 process
Most SDE-1 candidates we’ve seen go through 4 main stages:
Round 1: Online Coding Assessment
Round 2: Data Structures & Problem Solving (Technical Interview)
Round 3: Machine Coding / Low-Level Design
Round 4: Hiring Manager + Culture Fit
Some teams add or merge rounds (for example, combining DSA + LLD, or inserting a short HR chat at the end), but this 4-step pattern shows up consistently across multiple experiences.
Now, let’s go round by round.
2. Round 1 – Online Coding Assessment
Typical format (SDE-1):
Platform: Usually HackerRank / similar.
Duration: ~70–90 minutes.
Questions:
3 DSA problems (easy→medium→hard flavour), sometimes +1 SQL / query or scenario-based task.
Difficulty: Overall medium→hard.
Patterns our learners reported:
Arrays & Strings – prefix/suffix sums, two pointers, sliding window.
Hashmaps / Sets – frequency counting, grouping, anagrams, etc.
Graphs & Grids – BFS/DFS on matrices, “number of islands” style problems.
Light DP – ways to reach, knapsack-ish subsets, small constraints.
One learner had:
3 coding questions (two medium, one hard)
1 SQL query around joins and aggregation on an “orders” table, very on-brand for Swiggy.
What Swiggy seems to care about in the OA:
At least 2 questions fully solved with all visible test cases.
Clean, compilable code in your primary language (Java/C++/Python).
Mentioning time and space complexity in the explanation boxes.
Some attempts at the hardest problem even if you can’t fully crack it.
How to prep:
Practise solving 3 LeetCode mediums in ~75 minutes—that’s roughly the bar our learners felt.
Add SQL + basic DB questions to your practice if you’re targeting backend.
Simulate OAs with strict time and no phone / notes nearby.
3. Round 2 – Data Structures & Problem Solving (Technical)
Once you clear the OA, the next round is a live DSA / problem-solving interview.
Format:
Duration: ~60 minutes.
Interviewers: Usually 1 engineer from the team.
Content:
2 coding questions (one moderate, one tougher).
5–10 minutes of CS fundamentals and quick project discussion.
Common patterns from CodeKerdos + public reports:
Arrays / Strings: sliding window, binary search on answer, partitioning, classic “minimum in rotated array” type questions.
Trees / Graphs: tree traversals, LCA variants, BFS / DFS on grids.
DP: subsequences (LIS/LCS flavours), partition into K parts, or “min cost to do X” on arrays.
Bit / math puzzles for some candidates.
Quick CS checks:
Basics of OS (threads vs processes, deadlock conditions).
DBMS (indexes, transactions).
OOP (encapsulation, inheritance, interfaces vs abstract classes).
How interviewers typically conduct this round (from our mentors):
They’re okay if you start with a brute-force solution, as long as you clearly call it out and then improve it.
They give subtle hints if your direction is right.
Silence is risky—they expect you to talk through your reasoning and trade-offs.
How to shine here:
When you get a problem, clarify constraints and rephrase the problem first.
Walk through your brute-force idea, then optimise (typical path: O(n²) → O(n log n) / O(n) with better DS).
Dry run your final code on a tricky test case (empty inputs, duplicates, edges).
Have 2–3 crisp explanations ready for your top projects—tech stack, design, trade-offs.
4. Round 3 – Machine Coding / Low-Level Design
For many candidates, this is the make-or-break round. Swiggy, like several product companies, uses machine-coding to see if you can think and code like a real engineer in a constrained 60–120 minute window.
Typical format:
Duration: 60–90 minutes for SDE-1.
Question: 1 end-to-end design + implementation problem, usually in your preferred language.
Examples our learners and online reports mention:
Snake & Ladder game:
Design classes and write working code with players, board, dice, snakes, ladders, win conditions etc. This problem is frequently suggested for Swiggy/Flipkart/Ola-style machine coding prep.Order dispatch / assignment:
Given a set of orders and delivery partners, design logic to assign orders, maybe with distance / load constraints, and expose simple APIs to create orders, register partners, and assign.Restaurant / menu catalog:
Model restaurants, menu items, variants, add-ons, availability etc., and implement CRUD operations.Frontend/ASDE variants:
One Associate SDE candidate reported a grid UI machine-coding problem with disabled cells and toggle states, built in React. Another frontend candidate had a file explorer widget with nested folders/files.
What they evaluate here:
Object modeling: meaningful classes, separation of concerns, avoiding god objects.
API design: clear method names, input/output structures.
Correctness & edge cases: invalid inputs, duplicates, boundary conditions.
Basic scaling conversation: “What happens when number of orders / players / events grows 100x?”
Code readability: naming, small functions, minimal duplication.
How a mentor described the experience:
“The interviewer was collaborative—gave hints, asked for trade-offs at scale, and wanted to see how I refactor when new features are added.”
Prep tips:
Practise 3–5 classic machine coding problems end-to-end: Snake & Ladder, parking lot, tic-tac-toe, food ordering / dispatch, expense sharing.
Time yourself to 60–90 minutes and aim for running code, not just design.
After coding, deliberately add a new requirement (e.g., priority orders) and refactor—this mimics how interviewers extend the problem.
5. Round 4 – Hiring Manager + Culture Fit
By this point they usually know you can code. The HM round checks whether you can own real problems in Swiggy’s environment and whether you align with their culture and values.
Swiggy talks a lot about values like:
Consumer Comes First
Strive for Excellence
Be Humble
Always be Curious, Always be Learning
Exhibit Bias for Action
Stand up, Disagree and Commit
Integrity and honesty
These show up across their blogs, code of conduct, and leadership posts.
What this round usually covers:
Deep dive into 1–2 flagship projects
Why the project existed, what problem it solved, what metrics mattered.
Your specific contributions—design, performance improvements, debugging.
Failures, rollbacks, incidents, and what you learned.
Ownership & bias for action
Times you picked up something outside your JD (refactoring, infra, test stability).
Situations where you were blocked and unblocked yourself.
Working with others
Collaborating with product, design, QA, operations or data teams.
Handling disagreements and still delivering the project.
Swiggy-specific questions
“What do you like and dislike about the Swiggy/Instamart experience?”
“If delivery times in a city suddenly spiked, what would you investigate first?”
Here, stories with numbers stand out:
“Reduced p95 latency from 2.1s to 900ms.”
“Cut error rate from 0.7% to 0.2% after introducing retries + idempotency.”
“Improved conversion by 3–4% after cleaning up a checkout flow.”
That style resonates strongly with a company that talks about scale, reliability and convenience in its public reports.
6. Behavioural Question Themes (and what they’re really testing)
Across HM + technical rounds, our folks repeatedly saw questions around:
a) Metrics & impact mindset
“If delivery time in top cities goes up by 10 minutes for a week, what’s your immediate plan of action?”
“What metric would you personally track for Instamart to know it’s doing well?”
They’re testing: whether you think about data, root causes, and trade-offs—not just “I’d debug”.
b) Execution under pressure
“Tell me about a time you had a tight deadline with incomplete requirements—what did you do?”
“How do you prioritise when everything looks urgent?”
They’re testing: calmness under stress, clarity of communication, and bias for action.
c) Ownership & learning
“Describe a failure that was clearly your fault. What happened next?”
“Tell me about a change you drove that nobody explicitly asked for.”
They’re testing: humility + growth mindset, which align directly with Swiggy’s “Be Humble” and “Always be Learning” values.
Prepare 5–6 STAR stories (Situation–Task–Action–Result) that you can reuse across these patterns.
7. How to Prepare for Swiggy SDE-1 (Roadmap)
Here’s how we usually coach CodeKerdos learners who are targeting Swiggy within 6–8 weeks.
1. DSA (for OA + Round 2)
Focus on arrays, strings, hashmaps, heaps, sliding window, basic trees / graphs, and 1D/2D DP.
Solve 50–80 good problems: 60–70% mediums, rest easy/hard.
Alternate practicing speed rounds (3 problems / 75 mins) with depth rounds (1 hard problem / 45 mins, full dry-run).
2. Machine Coding
Pick a problem list: Snake & Ladder, parking lot, food ordering / dispatch, expense manager, tic-tac-toe, a small file explorer or grid UI if you’re frontend leaning.
For each: spend 15–20 minutes on design, then 60–70 minutes coding, then 10–15 minutes refactoring & adding features.
After each attempt, ask: “Would I be happy to ship this to production if the scope was small?”
3. Core CS & System Thinking (lightweight, for SDE-1)
OS: processes, threads, context switching, deadlock conditions.
DBMS: indexes, transactions, isolation levels, basic SQL.
Networking: HTTP vs HTTPS, REST basics, status codes.
You don’t need deep system design for SDE-1, but you do need enough to have a sensible conversation about caching, basic scaling, and failures.
4. Behavioural & Values Fit
Read Swiggy’s values and culture posts and their code of conduct; note the phrases that keep repeating (consumer-first, bias for action, humility, learning).
Write down 5–6 STAR stories and explicitly tag them with values (“consumer-first”, “bias for action”, etc.).
Practise answering aloud with a friend or mentor so you sound natural, not rehearsed.