Cisco Sr. Software Engineer interview questions

First was a technical screening phone interview with the hiring manager. 2nd round was an interview panel of 5 software engineer and 1 software architect. 3rd round was interview with the director, you can assume you are hired if you made it to the 3rd round. The base salary was average but the 15% equity bonus every year was attractive.

### Initial Phone Screen: (1 HR) ### - Conducted with the technical director. - Covered questions related to previous experience, Clean Code, and SOLID principles. - Topics included: - Polymorphism explanation. - Comparison between monolithic and microservices architectures, along with their pros and cons. - Task to write code for string reversal. - Discussion of various design patterns. - Personal experience (current job experience, challenges, etc.) ### Interview 1: (1 HR) ### - Problem: Trapping Rain Water [Link](https://leetcode.com/problems/trapping-rain-water/) - Allowed to use personal code editor. - Required to write code that compiles and includes a few tests. ### Interview 2: (1 HR) ### - Tasked with creating a linked list data structure from scratch in a personal code editor. - Methods included: add, reverse, print. - Required to write code that compiles and includes a few tests. - Additionally, tasked with: - Using a React sandbox environment. - Implementing binding events like adding text to a list and displaying it on button press. ### Interview 3: (1 HR) ### - Problem provided:: ``` // package whatever; // don't place package name! // TASK #1: Impliment removeSubStrings // TASK #2: Update to provide more telemetry data // TASK #3: Can I make this multi-threaded, i.e. pass in the same sourceString but with different subStrings // TASK #4: Does TASK #3 provide any real-world benefits? def main(str[] args) { str sourceString1 = "JarJarBinksJarJarWiki"; // BinksWiki str sourceString2 = "JarJarBinksJarJar"; // Binks str sourceString3 = "JarJarBinksJarJarWikiJar"; // BinksWikiJar str sourceString4 = "aJarJarBinksJarJarWikiJar"; // aBinksWikiJar str subString = "JarJar"; str finalString = ""; finalString = removeSubStrings(sourceString1, subString); System.out.println("sourceString1 finalString: " + finalString + System.lineSeparator()); finalString = removeSubStrings(sourceString2, subString); System.out.println("sourceString2 finalString: " + finalString + System.lineSeparator()); finalString = removeSubStrings(sourceString3, subString); System.out.println("sourceString3 finalString: " + finalString + System.lineSeparator()); finalString = removeSubStrings(sourceString4, subString); System.out.println("sourceString4 finalString: " + finalString + System.lineSeparator()); } ``` - Completed up to TASK 2 during the interview however, the interviewer told me from the begging that we'll probably have time for Task 1 and Task2 at max. - Implemented in Python in a personal code editor, without the need for compilation or tests; emphasis was on problem-solving approach.