Interviewing at MZ (formerly known as Machine Zone) can be an intense and challenging process. As a leading gaming and technology company known for huge hits like Game of War and Mobile Strike, they only recruit the very best talent.
To help you prepare and tackle even the toughest interview questions, I’ve put together this comprehensive guide covering some of the most common and tricky questions asked at MZ interviews.
Overview of MZ’s Interview Process
The MZ hiring process typically involves:
- Initial screening call with a recruiter
- Technical phone screen focused on coding
- On-site interviews consisting of 5-8 rounds, including both technical and behavioral questions
- Possible code pairing or whiteboard coding sessions
Interviews are conducted by various team members ranging from engineers to product managers. The process aims to thoroughly assess your technical abilities, problem-solving approach, and culture fit
While some candidates have great experiences others have reported extremely difficult technical questions and grueling all-day interviews. Preparation and persistence are key to standing out.
Most Common MZ Interview Questions
Here are some of the most frequently asked questions across various roles at MZ:
Technical Questions
Q1: How would you design a scalable system that can process massive amounts of data?
This tests your knowledge of building large-scale distributed systems. Focus on highlighting tools like Hadoop or Spark for distributed processing. Discuss concepts like horizontal scaling, message queues, and microservices. Provide specific examples of designing scalable systems from your experience.
Q2: Explain how you would optimize a mobile game’s performance and resource usage.
Demonstrate your deep knowledge of mobile game optimization. Discuss strategies like reusable object pools, texture atlases, motion vector reduction, CPU/GPU profiling, battery usage optimization, and reduced draw calls through batching. Provide examples of how you’ve optimized games in the past.
Q3: What testing approaches have you used for game development?
Showcase your expertise with game testing methodologies. Cover unit testing, integration testing, UI testing, exploratory testing, A/B testing, and quality assurance testing. Share examples of developing automated tests or leveraging tools like Unity Test Runner. Emphasize the importance of testing for stable, high-quality game releases.
Q4: Explain how you would design a matchmaking system for a multiplayer mobile game.
Discuss key design considerations like fair/quick matching, optimal server resource utilization, high availability, and low latency. Highlight relevant algorithms like Trueskill and approaches like distributed matchmaking. Provide examples of implementing a robust matching system, if possible.
Q5: How would you troubleshoot a memory leak in a mobile game?
Demonstrate your strong debugging skills and knowledge of memory management. Explain using profilers like Instruments on iOS or memory heap snapshots on Android to identify leak sources. Share any specific techniques you’ve used to pinpoint and fix memory leaks.
System Design Questions
Q1: Design a URL shortening service like Bitly.
Showcase your system design abilities. Cover requirements gathering, discussions on scalability and availability. Propose components like front-end API, ID generation service, caching layer, and persistent storage. Highlight important considerations like traffic volume estimation and redirect handling.
Q2: Design a notification system for delivering messages across distributed services.
Focus on scalability, high throughput, and reliability. Discuss using a queue model with load balancing and persistent storage for queue data. Propose failover mechanisms and retries for handling failures. Analyze the pros and cons of push vs pull delivery models.
Q3: Design a ride sharing service similar to Uber or Lyft.
Outline key use cases and constraints. Propose core components like mobile apps, mapping service, passenger/driver matching system, payment gateway, ratings/reviews system. Discuss challenges around location tracking, real-time status updates, ensuring safety, and scalability.
Q4: Design a large scale video streaming service like Netflix or YouTube.
Cover managing incoming uploads at scale and encoding formats. Propose CDNs for low latency streaming, optimized video caching, adaptive bitrate streaming, transcoding, recommendations, and analytics systems. Discuss challenges like huge storage needs, bandwidth costs, and scalability.
Q5: Design a social network platform like Facebook or LinkedIn.
Focus on scalability for large user bases, news feed generation, graph search capabilities, storage for posts/timelines, media sharing, ads engine, caching, security and privacy controls. Propose high level components and approaches to tackle challenges.
Behavioral Questions
Q1: Tell me about a time you took initiative to solve a challenging technical problem.
Share a specific example that highlights your problem solving skills, persistence and proactive attitude. Discuss your methodical debugging approach, any innovative solutions you came up with and the final outcome. Emphasize your tendency to take ownership of problems.
Q2: Describe a situation where you had to collaborate closely with team members to meet a deadline.
Highlight your teamwork, communication and time management skills. Share how you facilitated collaboration, helped align everyone towards meeting the deadline, and ensured the project was successful. Demonstrate your ability to work well cross-functionally.
Q3: Tell me about a mistake you made and how you handled it.
Be honest and share an example that isn’t critical. Discuss what you learned and how you improved your process to prevent similar issues in the future. Stay positive and emphasize growth over perfection. Demonstrate maturity, accountability and learning ability.
Q4: Why do you want to work at MZ and what value would you bring to the team?
Show your enthusiasm for MZ and the role. Highlight aspects of their products/culture that excite you. Discuss specific skills, experiences and work ethic that make you a strong candidate for their team. Research the company to speak knowledgeably about their work.
Q5: Describe a challenging situation where you had conflicting opinions and how you reached a resolution.
Share an example that demonstrates your conflict management, leadership and communication skills. Discuss how you professionally handled the situation, actively listened to different perspectives and drove consensus towards an amicable solution. Position yourself as a collaborative team player.
Tips for Acing the Interview
Here are some top tips for preparing for your MZ interview:
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Practice answering common questions out loud to polish your responses and identify any gaps in knowledge. Get feedback from colleagues.
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Brush up on data structures and algorithms as you may be asked to code on paper or whiteboards. Review common algorithms like sorting, searching and dynamic programming.
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Revise computer science fundamentals like database systems, operating systems, distributed computing and networking which often come up.
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Learn about MZ’s products and culture to show your passion for the company during behavioral questions.
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Prepare 3-5 strong questions to ask your interviewers around company vision, technology stack, team culture or day-to-day responsibilities. This demonstrates genuine interest.
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Review your resume and key projects so you can discuss your experiences confidently. Reflect on challenges faced and successes achieved.
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Get plenty of rest beforehand instead of cramming late nights. Eat well and stay hydrated on the interview day.
The MZ interview can be daunting but thorough preparation, persistence through multiple rounds, and showcasing your genuine passion for gaming and technology can help you clinch your dream job!
Example MZ Interview Answers
Let’s look at some strong sample answers to the most common MZ interview questions discussed above:
Q: How would you design a scalable system that can process massive amounts of data?
I would design a distributed processing system using a framework like Apache Hadoop or Spark running on commodity hardware. Hadoop provides great out-of-the-box scalability by leveraging MapReduce to parallelize processing across thousands of nodes.
Spark also offers primitives like Resilient Distributed Datasets for low latency data access across the cluster. Some key design principles I would follow are:
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Building stateless processing using microservices to allow for independent scaling
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Using object storage like S3 for large file storage and access
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Backing stateful services like metadata stores and databases with autoscaling solutions
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Implementing caching mechanisms like Redis to reduce load on databases
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Focusing on horizontal scaling out over vertical scaling up
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Using containers and orchestrators like Kubernetes for easy resource management
I’ve personally implemented similar large scale data pipelines that processed over 100 million records daily with great efficiency. The key is planning for scalability from the start instead of retrofitting it.
Q: Tell me about a time you took initiative to solve a challenging technical problem.
Recently, our mobile game server was experiencing periodic latency spikes leading to timeouts and sign-in failures. Players were getting frequently disconnected which was severely impacting engagement.
As the lead engineer, I decided to tackle this issue head-on before it became worse. My investigation involved reviewing app logs, profiling database queries, analyzing request flows and even replicating traffic against staging environments.
Within a couple of weeks, I identified the root cause – an inefficient database index structure that was slowing down lookups under
What’s on this page?
Interviewers will start assessing you as soon as they meet you, so your presentation and attitude are important. To make a good first impression:
- arrive on time
- dress smartly
- smile when you meet people
- be professional as soon as you enter the building. Someone at the front desk or someone else you meet could tell the interviewer what they think of you.
How to answer interview questions
- To show you’re interested and excited, speak clearly and change the tone of your voice.
- Before you answer, give each question some thought so you can give a good answer.
- Pay close attention to the questions and let the interviewer lead the conversation. If a question is hard for you to understand, ask for it to be explained or said again.
- If you’ve had a job before, don’t say bad things about your bosses or coworkers.
- Give examples from your own life that show what you know and can do.
- Believe in your abilities and feel good about what you’ve done. For instance, instead of saying things like “I only have ” or “I don’t have…” Tell the employer what you can do for them.
If someone asks you about a past activity, the STAR method (situation, task, action, result) is the best way to answer.
- Situation – describe what the situation was.
- Task – describe the task you had to do.
- Action – describe what you did to achieve the task.
- Result – describe the final result.
For example:
“When I worked as an assistant manager at Sally’s Sandals, I planned a VIP sales event for customers with loyalty cards.” I had to set up the store, make sure there was food and drink for customers, and make sure there were enough employees to work that night. The event went very smoothly and we exceeded our sales targets for the evening by 50 percent. ”.
Summarise your work and study experience and talk about your goals.
Use your research about the job and organisation to answer this question.
Talk about your interest in the job and the organisation
Explain how your personality, skills and experience make you ideal for the job.
Discuss any skills or experience you have that will help you do the job.
Discuss your strengths and then talk about how you overcome your weaknesses.
Following the STAR method, describe a specific task or situation, what you did, and the outcome –
- Situation – describe what the situation was.
- Task – describe the task you had to do.
- Action – describe what you did to achieve the task.
- Result – describe the final result.
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FAQ
What questions are asked at the GT interview?
Why should we hire you?
What questions are asked in Gap interview questions?
What questions should you ask a hiring manager?
If asked this question, be honest and specific about your future goals, but consider this: A hiring manager wants to know a) if you’ve set realistic expectations for your career, b) if you have ambition (a.k.a., this interview isn’t the first time you’re considering the question), and c) if the position aligns with your goals and growth.
How many questions should you ask during an interview?
And, of course, be mindful of the interviewer’s time. If you were scheduled to talk for an hour and they turn to you with five minutes left, choose two or three questions that are most important to you. You will always have more time to ask questions once you have the job offer in hand. “So, do you have any questions for me?”
How do you answer a job interview question?
In your answer, you’ll want to reassure them you’d have things under control (both in what you say and how you say it), describe a specific system or method you’ve used (bonus points if you can tie it to the role you’re interviewing for), and explain how it benefited you and your team. Just make sure your answer is succinct and, well, organized.
What questions do employers ask during an interview?
While we can’t know exactly what an employer will ask, here are 10 common interview questions along with advice on how to answer them. The questions include: Could you tell me something about yourself and describe your background in brief?: Interviewers like to hear stories about candidates.
