Pure storage interview questions

Interviews for Top Jobs at Pure Storage

• What is your background and experience.
• Signed NDA, but basic CS questions and algorithms.
• General problem solving with JavaScript (no DS, Algo etc)
• General questions about my understanding Angular
• UI specific question about grids, css & layouts & asked to created a grid layout using bootstrap
• DB Related questions about optimization, design & scaling
• Questions from my Resume & experience
• Questions about handling tasks related to my role (tasks similar to what i had already achieved)
• The OA consisted of 2 coding questions and 9 multiple choice questions asking the basic CS concepts
• Solutions for a functional scenario
• Technical knowledge assessment
• What do you bring to the company?
• Data Structures, Algorithms, Concurrency based questions
• What made you apply for a role in our comprany?
• Tell me about your managing experience
• What is your favorite project and why?

Pure Storage Software Engineer Interview Guide

Overview

Why did you join the team?

Ganesh: I was coming out of a crazy startup experience and wanted to join a company with a lot of maturity in leadership and vision. A former Google colleague had joined Pure and recommended it. Pure had everything I was looking for: a promising trajectory, positive buzz from venture capitalists, and a different level of maturity and quality of people.

Tell us about your path since joining Pure.

Ganesh: I started as an engineer and spent the first year or so learning. Then I had a chance to work on the customer escalations team, which is like a combination of CSI and SWAT. You have to go deep into a sophisticated system and make difficult decisions quickly. I saw areas of the product that I thought could be improved and I asked to work on them. I’d learned a lot about the customer side and saw an opportunity to add value. That’s how I got into management. It’s exciting to see people find new opportunities. And it’s been a great opportunity for me to grow.

Pure Storage Software Engineer Interview Process

Typically, interviews at Pure Storage vary by role and team, but commonly Software Engineer interviews follow a fairly standardized process across these question topics.

In the Pure Storage Software Engineer interview process, the most commonly tested skills are in algorithms , python and sql .a/b testingalgorithmsanalyticsmachine learningprobabilityproduct metricspythonsqlstatisticsPure Storage Software EngineerAverage Software EngineerHigh confidence

Weve gathered this data from parsing thousands of interview experiences sourced from members.

What people are saying about Pure storage interview

Software Engineer Interview:

• It took about a month. Recruiter call, OA, 4 rounds of technical interview, and an interview with the manager. OA questions were basic CS, 4 rounds of technical covered design/implementation, concurrency, data structures, and algorithms. You don’t have to know everything, just to talk while you think when doing the technical interviews. Your code doesn’t have to compile, you can do a pseudo-code also.
• round 1 :-interview asked to implement the set with optimizing technique. with real time scenarios. round 2: they ask me the one dsa question about binary bit map to implement on the hacker rank platform.
• Technical assessment on Hackerrank. ‘Pure Storage Engineering Challenge’ Standard set of questions across algorithms and data structures over 70 minutes of time allotted. Preparation from Hackerrank’s free sets of interview questions definitely helped.
• I had an OA, a video call with a recruiter, and technical interviews over Zoom. Even though I did not receive an offer, the overall experience was ok, except the interviewer did not show up for the second round of the technical interviews. I ended up rescheduling the interview with another interviewer, but I thought it was a bit unprofessional, and no one apologized for that.
• Overall fast paced interview process, total of 6 rounds – OA, 4 technical rounds each one hour long and after that interview with manager. Interviewers seemed interested and helpful with solving the tasks.
• Phone call with recruiter, HackerRank challenge and hiring manager interview. Declined to proceed with process after the challenge. Recruiter mentioned they couldn’t fill the role in Seattle and I found out why very quickly. The challenge was one of the most poorly worded ones I’ve ever encountered. And it had contradictions and no examples or detailed information. I made the company aware and they wanted to proceed to the next step but I was amazed they had given this challenge to so many developers and not received any feedback or double checked the challenge foe accuracy. The challenge and then communications with the recruiter was enough information for me to walk away.

Member Of Technical Staff Interview:

• Couple of technical interviews, straight to the point, not too much empty talk, very pleasant. Interviewers always friendly and professional, open to have a casual chat in the last minutes and answer questions about the company.
• This was an on campus opportunity and the interview process was completely unique when compared to other companies which I had appeared for(Cisco, Akamai etc.) Instead of asking typical DSA questions they concentrated more on how we as a developer will design systems, write code while taking care of scalability, concurrency control, Critical section problem etc. (So a guy with strong hold in operating systems and common sense should be able to easily come up with the solution for the problems and also they didn’t expect us to crack the problem in one go, First they gave some niche question then methodologically increased the complexity of the question and the questions were such that it didn’t have one correct solution. We started with primitive solution and the interviewer kept adding more requirements for example thinking from a multi threading perspective, how to avoid critical section problem, how would you decrease latency etc. Interviewer also told us that they didn’t expect a fresher to get the correct and complete solution they just wanted to test our thinking process, IQ and EQ( Emotional quotient is as important as IQ, This tests how will you work with your team and the customer to solve the problem in a better and efficient manner)).

First Round(Coding test):

• This was conducted on hackerrank and the test consisted of 2 coding questions and 7-8 MCQ’s. Level of the coding questions were easy to medium and MCQ’s consisted of aptitude, OS, CN.

Second round(Technical):

• There are multiple users calling a method reg_cb at different instances of time, as shown below. Simultaneously, there is an event happening. All the user requests that were made during the execution of the event should wait till the event completes and then execute the reg_cb method. Once the event is finished, the user requests to the reg_cb method can be executed immediately. Implement how to handle the given scenario.
• Was asked many questions on basic fundamentals like.
• When does a concurrent modification exception occur?
• When is the possibility of same thread (user x) calling the reg_cb() twice?
• What are the possible deadlock scenarios?
• What is mutex? etc.. credit: Leetcode (I was also asked the same question)

Third round(Technical):

• Basically I was asked to design an API which a client will use and factors like scalability, responsiveness and latency were needed to be taken care of using best practices. Fourth round (Technical + Managerial): First part of the interview consisted of typical management questions like how would you resolve conflict between teammates, how would you work with a team etc. Next part consisted of in depth Operating systems and computer networks related questions. In os I was asked about processes, threads, kernel, memory allocation etc. In CN I was asked to explain what happens under the hood when we enter google.com in the browser, Difference between UDP,TCP. Why use UDP even though it’s not reliable?

Interview process at Pure StorageOverall experience

On a scale of 1-10 where 1 is Poor and 10 is Excellent, rating is 8.PoorExcellent

On a scale of 1-10 where 1 is Easy and 10 is Difficult, rating is 6.EasyDifficultInterview process lengthAbout a month46%About two weeks17%More than one month17%About a day or two13%About a week8%Most reported stepsPhone call/screening91%On-site interview87%Background check78%Group interview43%Problem solving exercises39%Least reported stepsTake-home/sample work0%Drug test0%They have no interview0%