Slice | SDE-1 Backend Intern & FTE | On-Campus Interview Experience

I participated in Slice’s on-campus hiring process for the SDE-1 Backend Intern and FTE role.

Online Assessment

The process started with an online assessment consisting of two coding problems with a total time limit of 90 minutes.

Both problems were around the medium difficulty level, so managing time and getting both solutions working within the given window was important.

Round 1: AI-Assisted Machine Coding

Duration: 75 minutes

This round was quite different from a traditional DSA interview. The focus was on building a working backend project from scratch rather than solving individual algorithmic problems.

The official guidelines were shared only two days before the interview. We were allowed to use any programming language and could choose in-memory storage, SQLite, MongoDB, or a similar setup depending on the problem.

Chat-based AI tools were also permitted, but the screen had to be shared throughout the round. Agentic tools were not allowed.

For my round, I was asked to build a Parking Lot Management System.

The problem involved designing the core entities and implementing functionality around:

• Vehicle entry and exit

• Parking slot allocation

• Different vehicle types

• Availability and slot management

• Handling the overall flow through a working application

From what I discussed with friends who were part of the same campus drive, some other problems:

• Personal Finance Tracker - users, transactions, income/expense summaries and REST APIs

• Student Attendance System - teacher/student roles and authentication

• Movie Booking System - shows, seat selection, booking and seat-level concurrency

• Spending Limits Service - in-memory implementation with per-transaction limits, rolling 24-hour limits, rolling 1-hour transaction counts, and APIs such as authorize and getUsage

The main thing being evaluated seemed to be how well you could translate requirements into a working implementation while making reasonable design decisions.

Round 2: Hiring Manager

Duration: 45 minutes

The final round was mostly conversational and focused heavily on my resume and previous projects.

The interviewer started with a brief introduction and then picked areas from my resume for a deeper discussion. Some of the discussion revolved around:

• Project architecture and design decisions

• Why I chose a particular technology stack

• How different components of the system work

• What happens when multiple requests access the system concurrently

• How I would improve or redesign parts of my projects

• Why I chose backend engineering

• Why I wanted to join Slice

• How I currently use AI in my development workflow

There were quite a few follow-up questions, so having a clear understanding of everything mentioned on the resume was important.

Offer

I received an offer for a 6-month internship from January to June 2027 with a stipend of approximately ₹1 lakh per month.

The internship also comes with an FTE opportunity based on performance, with the first-year compensation being around ₹36 LPA.