🎯 On-Campus Interview Experience for SDE Role at eQ Technologic

This post details my on-campus virtual interview experience for the Software Development Engineer (SDE) role at eQ Technologic. The selection process was a series of five virtual rounds.

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🏢 Company & Application Process

eQ Technologic is a product-based company known for its eQube®-DaaS platform, which provides data integration and accessibility solutions. The role was for the SDE position, open to students from the CS and IT branches graduating in 2026.

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📅 Application Timeline

The entire recruitment process was conducted online.

• Application Submitted: July 28, 2025
• Online Assessment: August 4, 2025 (Conducted on SHL platform)
• Interviews: August 5 and 6, 2025 (Conducted on Microsoft Teams)
• Offer Received: August 6, 2025 (Late night via email)

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🔹 Round 1: Online Assessment

• Format: 14 minutes for 14 MCQs, and 45 minutes for 2 coding questions.
• Difficulty: Easy to Medium.

I was among the 48 students who cleared this round and advanced to the interviews.

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🔹 Round 2: Technical Interview (3 hours)

The interview started with my introduction. Then, a detailed discussion followed on:

• Project Discussion:
  The interview began with a detailed discussion of my two projects. I demonstrated the live-hosted projects, explained my codebase, and justified my tech stack choices. The interviewer asked deep counter-questions, such as “Why MongoDB and not a relational database?” and “Can we implement a relational database instead of MongoDB in your project?” He also asked me to explain the logic for my search bar and identify potential flaws and improvements in my project.

• Technical Skills & OOP:
  I was asked to rate my technical skills out of 10. The conversation then shifted to core C++ and OOP concepts like access specifiers, friend functions, polymorphism, explicit constructors, and virtual functions. For virtual functions, he gave me a scenario of classes having virtual functions in them along with multiple inheritance and asked me about the expected output.

• Data Structures & Algorithms (DSA):
  The interviewer asked me about advanced data structures like Segment Trees, Red-Black Trees, AVL Trees, and Balanced Binary Trees. Then he asked me about the linked list cycle detection problem, which I explained with both brute-force and optimized solutions.

• System Design:
  I was asked to design a parking system and explain my approach along with which data structures I used to implement it.

• Graph Theory:
  A graph problem required me to find the best path considering factors like number of lanes, traffic, and distance. He also asked about using Minimum Spanning Trees (MST), specifically Prim’s or Kruskal’s algorithm.

• DBMS:
  Questions covered database normalization, including 3NF and BCNF.

• Puzzles:

  1. A chocolate factory has 10 wrapping machines, each designed to produce chocolates weighing exactly 1 gram. However, due to a malfunction, one of the machines is faulty and produces chocolates that each weigh 0.9 grams instead of 1 gram. You are allowed to use the weighing scale only once. How would you identify the faulty machine?
  2. You are given two ropes, each of which takes exactly 60 minutes to burn completely. How can you measure exactly 45 minutes using them?

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🔹 Round 3: Technical Interview (1.5 hours)

This round, held on the same day, focused on problem-solving and core concepts. The interviewer was well-experienced.

• DSA: He asked two easy and one medium DSA question.

  1. Print a linked list in reverse order given the head of the linked list.
  2. Print the Fibonacci series in reverse order using recursion while handling invalid inputs.
  3. Given an integer array of size n. Each integer appears exactly once except 'a' which appears twice and 'b' which is missing. The task is to find the repeating and missing numbers 'a' and 'b'.

• OOP: He asked to list down C++ and OOP concepts I knew, then told me to implement them in a real-world program. The interviewer asked questions and requested modifications to my code.

• SQL: He asked a query to find all employees with the second-highest salary from a given employee table.

• Web Development: He showed me an image of a webpage and asked how I designed it using HTML and CSS.

• Puzzle:
  You are given two unmarked containers, one with a capacity of 3 liters and the other with a capacity of 5 liters. Using only these two containers, you can fill them completely, empty them entirely, or pour water from one into the other until one is full or the other is empty. With these operations alone, your task is to measure exactly 4 liters of water. How would you do that?

After clearing the second technical round, I was one of the 17 students to receive a call for the next round.

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🔹 Round 4: Coding Challenge (1.5 hours)

In this round, we got a problem statement and had to code it and send it back to them without compiling, as it should be the first draft of your code.

• Task: Implement a calendar program based on a given start month and number of months.
• Goal: The focus was on code modularity, clean design, and proper formatting.

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🔹 Round 5: Tech + HR Round (30 minutes)

The final round was a combined technical and HR discussion.

• Code Review: I demonstrated and explained my code from the previous round, and the interviewer asked me to run the code and asked for some minor changes to perform on it.
• Personal Discussion: We discussed my strengths, weaknesses, and hobbies.
• Q&A: I had the opportunity to ask a question about company culture, which was answered in detail.

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✅ Verdict

✅ Selected! I was one of the 15 students who were selected for the Full-time SDE role. 🎉

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💡 Tips for Aspirants

Based on my successful experience, here are a few key takeaways:

• Be Authentic: Experienced interviewers can easily spot dishonesty. Be genuine and show your passion for learning.
• Master the Fundamentals: Focus on a strong understanding of core subjects, including DSA, OOP, DBMS, and your projects.
• Know Your Resume: Be prepared for a thorough discussion on everything you’ve listed. They will conduct a deep resume grind.
• Communicate Clearly: Continuously explain your thought process while solving a problem. This keeps the interviewer engaged and helps them follow your logic.
• Stay Calm: Take your time, ask clarifying questions, and don’t rush. If you get stuck, first explain the brute-force approach and then discuss how to optimize it.

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✨ Good luck to all future aspirants! 🍀