Skip to content

Practising for the hardest companies

~9 min

In short

My view, and it is a view, not a published fact: if you prepare for the companies with the hardest selection, such as Media.net, Coinbase, Rubrik, Uber, Atlassian, D. E. Shaw and the quant firms, you will usually be well prepared for the rest. So the targets on this site are set at that bar. No company says its process is harder than another's, and no source gives a number for the difficulty. What public sources do show is what these processes ask for beyond plain DSA, and that is what this page lists.

What the public record shows

Almost nothing here is official. I separate what the company published from what candidates reported.

Published by the company (read on 18 Oct 2026). - Atlassian's engineering interview page lists a two-part coding interview (data structures and code design) in a language of your choice, a 60-minute systems design interview with laddered follow-ups, a manager interview, a values interview, and a hiring committee. It says clean code matters but "what's most important is how you think." - Jane Street's software engineering page says the final rounds focus on collaborating on a series of coding problems, that you must write real code, that any language is fine, and that it avoids puzzle and mental-math questions for software roles. It does not mention India.

Candidate-reported (anecdotal; each is one person's account). - Media.net: reports describe rounds of 60 minutes with two medium-level DSA problems, followed by a hiring-manager round about your projects. Older reports describe a machine-coding round (a Splitwise-style design) and a high-level design round, and also questions on OOP, SQL, OS and networking. The latest report I found is from Oct 2025 and covers one role. - Coinbase: Coinbase's own blog post on interviewing exists, but I could not read it. Third-party guides describe a coding screen, then rounds of coding, system design, a progressive coding exercise and behavioural questions, with system design themes such as payments and ledgers, and an emphasis on correctness and edge cases. Guides disagree on the details. The Coinbase roles I found in India were for experienced engineers, and I found no fresher track. Check the careers page. - Rubrik and Uber: reports describe rounds on concurrency (producer-consumer, task scheduler, pub-sub) and machine coding, besides DSA and system design. - D. E. Shaw: reports describe an online round with coding and computer-science questions, then rounds on DSA, OOP, databases and OS, and one low-level design with concurrent requests.

I found no credible source for the difficulty or rating of any company's online assessment. Any claim like "their test is Codeforces 1800" is a guess.

What this means for practice

These are my recommendations, drawn from the pattern above. The pattern is anecdotal, so treat the list as a way to cover your bases, not as a statement of what any company will ask.

  1. Include hard problems. On 18 Oct 2026 LeetCode's own API reported 4,086 problems: 972 easy, 2,130 medium and 984 hard, about 24% hard. The count changes weekly. Of your 1,000+ problems, aim for at least 250 hard-level ones, and solve many without a hint. Hard problems are where recognising a new pattern is tested.
  2. Practise contests, not only lists. Contest problems are unfamiliar by design. If you want a number to track, Codeforces Specialist to Expert, or beyond, and a LeetCode contest rating around 1800 or higher, are my guidance for being comfortable at this bar. They are not requirements.
  3. Learn concurrency. Threads, locks, producer-consumer, a thread-safe queue, a task scheduler. Write each one yourself, and write a test that tries to break it. Start with the Python threading documentation and the Go section of this site if you use Go.
  4. Do machine-coding and low-level design rounds. Build a small working system, such as an in-memory queue, a rate limiter or a booking system, in 60 to 90 minutes, with clean classes and tests. See OOP and design basics and the LLD section.
  5. Go deep on system design. Payments, ledgers, idempotency, consistency and failure handling matter for fintech-style companies. See practising system design.
  6. Write correct, tested code. Edge cases, input validation and tests are what several reports stress. See testing basics.
  7. Explain as you go. Atlassian says it looks for how you think, and Jane Street says its rounds are collaborative. Practise talking through a problem with another person.
  8. Know your projects deeply. Several reports include a round on your past work.

Freshers and these companies

Many of these companies hire experienced engineers first, and public pages do not say whether they have a fresher track in India. Check each careers page. If there is no fresher path, a strong first job, internships and open-source work are the usual routes in. Preparing at this bar still helps with every other company.

Try this

Pick one hard problem you have not seen. Give yourself 60 minutes, no hints. Whatever the result, write down the pattern you were missing in your tracker, and solve it again from scratch a week later.

Sources

  • Atlassian, engineering interview process (read 18 Oct 2026): https://www.atlassian.com/company/careers/resources/interviewing/engineering
  • Jane Street, preparing for a software engineering interview (read 18 Oct 2026): https://www.janestreet.com/preparing-for-a-software-engineering-interview/
  • LeetCode problem counts, measured from LeetCode's own API on 18 Oct 2026: https://leetcode.com/
  • Coinbase, how to interview at Coinbase (could not be read; listed as an unconfirmed source): https://www.coinbase.com/blog/how-to-interview-at-coinbase
  • Candidate-reported, third-party Coinbase guide (undated): https://www.tryexponent.com/guides/coinbase-software-engineer-interview
  • Candidate-reported, Media.net experiences: https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/?p=361462 (2019) and https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/?p=372695 (2020)
  • Candidate-reported, Rubrik (2021): https://www.jointaro.com/interviews/companies/rubrik/experiences/software-engineer-bengaluru-august-1-2021-no-offer-neutral-4090e5b2/
  • Candidate-reported, Uber SDE-2 (undated): https://roundz.substack.com/p/interview-experience-169-uber-sde2
  • Python threading documentation: https://docs.python.org/3/library/threading.html