Arcesium interview process (2026)

Round-by-round breakdown of the Arcesium software engineering interview across 3 levels and 15 rounds: interview mode, sample questions, and worked solutions.

Arcesium salary & ratings · All interview processes

Software Developer Intern (Summer, ~2 months)

Difficulty: Medium · Timeline: 1-2 days · Recommended prep: 4-8 weeks · Cooldown: No formally published cooldown; campus candidates typically

  1. Round 0: Online Assessment (3 timed sections + coding)

    Assessment · ~80 minutes · difficulty 2/5 · elimination round

    Mode of interview: Online assessment · HackerRank

    Sample question: Number of Islands — Given an m x n 2D binary grid of '1' (land) and '0' (water), count the number of islands. An island is a maximal group of '1' cells connected 4-directionally (up/down/left/right).

  2. Round 1: Technical Interview 1 (Coding / DSA)

    Onsite · ~45-75 minutes · difficulty 2/5 · elimination round

    Mode of interview: Live interview · HackerRank CodePair

    Sample question: Top K Frequent Elements — Given an integer array nums and an integer k, return the k most frequent elements (in any order). It is guaranteed the answer is unique.

  3. Round 2: Technical Interview 2 (Coding + CS fundamentals + Project)

    Onsite · ~50-75 minutes · difficulty 3/5 · elimination round

    Mode of interview: Onsite or virtual onsite interview

    Sample question: Minimum Path Sum — Given an m x n grid of non-negative integers, find a path from top-left to bottom-right that minimizes the sum of numbers along the path. You may only move right or down. Return that minimum sum.

  4. Round 3: Technical Interview 3 (Senior / Hiring Manager)

    Onsite · ~45 minutes · difficulty 3/5 · elimination round

    Mode of interview: Onsite or virtual onsite interview

  5. Round 4: HR / Behavioral Round

    Behavioral · ~30-35 minutes · difficulty 1/5

    Mode of interview: Live behavioral interview

Software Engineer / SDE (entry-mid, India)

Difficulty: Medium · Timeline: 3 weeks · Recommended prep: 6-10 weeks · Cooldown: ~6-month

  1. Round 0: Online Assessment (HackerRank)

    Assessment · 60-70 minutes · difficulty 3/5 · elimination round

    Mode of interview: Online assessment

    Sample question: Merge Intervals — Given an unsorted list of intervals [start, end], merge all overlapping intervals and return the resulting non-overlapping intervals. The interviewer explicitly hands them in unsorted.

  2. Round 1: Technical Interview 1 (DSA / Coding)

    Phone · 45-60 minutes · difficulty 3/5 · elimination round

    Mode of interview: Remote phone or video interview

    Sample question: Decode String — Decode an encoded string of the form k[encoded]. Example: input '3[a2[b]]' -> output 'abbabbabb'. Encodings can be nested.

  3. Round 2: Technical Interview 2 (DSA + SQL, light LLD)

    Onsite · 45-60 minutes · difficulty 3/5 · elimination round

    Mode of interview: Onsite or virtual onsite interview

    Sample question: Bank account system (OOP / LLD) — Design the class hierarchy for a banking system with several account types (savings, current, fixed-deposit) supporting deposit, withdrawal, balance inquiry and interest calculation. Model shared vs type-specific behavior (not all accounts have all operations — e.g. current accounts have no interest), and discuss extending it for a new account type without touching existing classes.

  4. Round 3: Hiring Manager Round (Technical + Managerial)

    Onsite · 45-60 minutes · difficulty 3/5 · elimination round

    Mode of interview: Onsite or virtual onsite interview

  5. Round 4: HR Round

    Behavioral · ~30 minutes · difficulty 1/5

    Mode of interview: Live behavioral interview

Senior Software Engineer (SSE, India)

Difficulty: Medium · Timeline: ~2-3 weeks · Recommended prep: 8-12 weeks · Cooldown: ~6-month

  1. Round 0: Online Assessment (HackerRank)

    Assessment · ~60 minutes · difficulty 3/5 · elimination round

    Mode of interview: Online assessment

    Sample question: Interval List Intersections — Given two lists of closed intervals, each list pairwise-disjoint and sorted by start, return the intersection of the two lists. Example: A=[[1,3],[5,6],[7,9]], B=[[2,3],[5,7]] -> [[2,3],[5,6],[7,7]].

  2. Round 1: DSA / Coding Round 1

    Onsite · ~60 minutes · difficulty 3/5 · elimination round

    Mode of interview: Onsite or virtual onsite interview

    Sample question: Word Ladder II — Given beginWord, endWord and a word list, return ALL shortest transformation sequences (not just the length) where each step changes exactly one letter and every intermediate word is in the list. Arcesium's twist: return the actual sequence, so BFS to build the level graph then backtrack to reconstruct paths.

  3. Round 2: DSA / Coding Round 2 (+ SQL, light design)

    Onsite · ~60 minutes · difficulty 3/5 · elimination round

    Mode of interview: Onsite or virtual onsite interview

    Sample question: Maximum Sum Increasing Subsequence — Given an array of positive integers, find the maximum sum of a strictly increasing subsequence (elements need not be contiguous). Example: [1,101,2,3,100] -> 106 (1+2+3+100).

  4. Round 3: Hiring Manager Round

    Onsite · ~60 minutes · difficulty 3/5 · elimination round

    Mode of interview: Onsite or virtual onsite interview

  5. Round 4: HR Round

    Behavioral · ~30 minutes · difficulty 1/5

    Mode of interview: Live behavioral interview

Other companies' interview processes

Worked sample solutions (code, design diagrams, and STAR answers) for every round are available in the FAANGPlus app: open interview processes.