Tide UK Fintech SDE-3 Interview Experience

With around 6 years of experience in Java backend development, I went into the Tide SDE-3 process expecting the usual mix of coding, system design, and backend questions. The actual interview turned out slightly different.

The process started with a short HR and technical discussion, followed by a practical code-review round. The final round was with the hiring manager and went deep into my project experience and architecture decisions.

Round-by-Round Experience

HR and Initial Technical Round

The first call lasted around 30 minutes.

After a brief discussion about my background, we moved into technical topics.

The interviewer asked about multithreading, event-driven architecture, and end-to-end project delivery. I also explained my responsibilities in previous backend projects and how involved I had been from development to production.

The interviewer then gave me some context about the role and expectations for an SDE-3 engineer.

Code Review Round

This was the most practical round. I was given around 50 lines of an API controller where service calls, database operations, event publishing, and business logic were mixed together.

I had around 40 minutes to review the code and write at least 15 comments covering both major and minor issues.

After that, we had a 20-minute discussion around my observations. For several comments, the interviewer asked why I considered something problematic, what impact it could have in production, and how I would redesign it.

The focus was mainly on code quality, separation of responsibilities, maintainability, and production risks.

Hiring Manager Round

The final round started with a 15-20 minute discussion about one of my projects.

From there, the interviewer kept going deeper into the decisions I had made. If I mentioned a technology, I was asked why we chose it.

The conversation covered:

• Technology and architecture choices

• Alternatives and tradeoffs

• Scalability

• Problems faced during development

• Individual contribution

• Production ownership

This round felt less like a fixed questionnaire and more like a technical conversation.

Interview Result

After completing all three rounds, I received the confirmation that I had cleared the process and received an offer from Tide.

The code-review round stood out for me because it tested something different from regular coding interviews. Overall, the process focused heavily on whether I could reason about backend systems, defend engineering decisions, and understand their impact in production.