Citi interview process (2026)

Round-by-round breakdown of the Citi software engineering interview across 4 levels and 19 rounds: interview mode, sample questions, and worked solutions.

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Technology Analyst (Campus / New Grad)

Difficulty: Medium · Timeline: ~2-4 weeks · Recommended prep: 4-6 weeks

  1. Round 0: Online Assessment (AMCAT / HackerRank)

    Assessment · ~2 hours · difficulty 2/5 · elimination round

    Mode of interview: Online assessment · HackerRank

    Sample question: Given a string S and an index k, reverse only the portion of S from index k to the end and print the resulting string. Example: S = citibank, k = 4 -> citiknab.

  2. Round 1: Technical Interview I

    Onsite · ~30-45 min · difficulty 2/5 · elimination round

    Mode of interview: Onsite or virtual onsite interview

    Sample question: Given a string containing the characters ( ) [ ] { }, check whether the brackets are balanced using a stack. Print "balanced" or "not balanced".

  3. Round 2: Technical Interview II (select cycles)

    Onsite · ~30 min · difficulty 2/5

    Mode of interview: Onsite or virtual onsite interview

    Sample question: Employees(id, name, dept_id, salary). Write a SQL query to fetch the second-highest salary in each department, along with the department id. Explain how your query handles departments with a single employee.

  4. Round 3: HR Round

    Behavioral · ~10-15 min

    Mode of interview: Live behavioral interview

Officer — Software Engineer (2-5 yrs)

Difficulty: Medium · Timeline: ~3-5 weeks · Recommended prep: 6-8 weeks

  1. Round 0: Recruiter Screen

    Phone · ~20 min · elimination round

    Mode of interview: Remote phone or video interview

  2. Round 1: HackerRank Online Assessment

    Assessment · ~90 min · difficulty 3/5 · elimination round

    Mode of interview: Online assessment · HackerRank

    Sample question: You are given N daily transaction amounts (can be negative for reversals) and a target K. Count the number of contiguous subarrays whose sum equals exactly K. N up to 10^5, so an O(N) approach is expected. Input: N K, then N integers. Output: the count.

  3. Round 2: Technical Round I — Core Java + DSA

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

    Mode of interview: Onsite or virtual onsite interview

    Sample question: Implement an LRU cache with O(1) get and put. First line: capacity and number of operations Q. Each of the next Q lines is either "GET k" (print the value or -1) or "PUT k v". Discuss what changes if multiple threads access the cache.

  4. Round 3: Technical Round II — Spring Boot + Design Basics

    Onsite · ~45-60 min · difficulty 3/5

    Mode of interview: Onsite or virtual onsite interview

    Sample question: Design the REST API for an internal funds-transfer service: endpoints, request/response bodies, status codes, and how you guarantee a transfer is not executed twice when the client retries after a timeout. Sketch the tables you would need.

  5. Round 4: Managerial + HR Round

    Behavioral · ~30-45 min · difficulty 1/5

    Mode of interview: Live behavioral interview

AVP — Senior Software Engineer

Difficulty: Medium · Timeline: ~4-6 weeks · Recommended prep: 6-8 weeks

  1. Round 0: Recruiter Screen

    Phone · ~20-30 min · elimination round

    Mode of interview: Remote phone or video interview

  2. Round 1: Coding Screen (HackerRank or Live)

    Assessment · ~60-90 min · difficulty 3/5 · elimination round

    Mode of interview: Online assessment · HackerRank

    Sample question: You receive settlement windows as intervals [start, end] from multiple upstream systems. Merge all overlapping intervals and return the consolidated list sorted by start time, then state the total time covered. Walk through complexity and how you would unit-test it.

  3. Round 2: Technical Panel — Java + Architecture Deep Dive

    Onsite · ~60 min · difficulty 4/5

    Mode of interview: Onsite or virtual onsite interview

  4. Round 3: System Design Round

    System_design · ~60 min · difficulty 4/5

    Mode of interview: Live system design interview

    Sample question: Design a service that ingests payment status events from 4 legacy systems (file drops + MQ) and exposes a consistent, audited status API to internal apps, handling out-of-order and duplicate events. Cover storage choice, ordering, idempotency, reconciliation, and how auditors can replay history.

  5. Round 4: Managerial Round

    Behavioral · ~45 min · difficulty 1/5

    Mode of interview: Live behavioral interview

VP — Engineering Lead

Difficulty: Medium · Timeline: ~6-8 weeks · Recommended prep: 8+ weeks

  1. Round 0: HR / Recruiter Discussion

    Phone · ~30 min · elimination round

    Mode of interview: Remote phone or video interview

  2. Round 1: Technical Round with Senior Engineers

    Onsite · ~60 min · difficulty 3/5

    Mode of interview: Onsite or virtual onsite interview

  3. Round 2: Architecture + System Design Review

    System_design · ~60-75 min · difficulty 4/5

    Mode of interview: Live system design interview

    Sample question: You own a core settlement system running on-prem with an Oracle backend and strict RPO of zero for money movement. Lay out a 3-phase plan to make it resilient across two regions, including data replication choice, failover decisioning, what you would never automate, and how you prove RPO/RTO to regulators.

  4. Round 3: Hiring Manager + Managerial Panel

    Behavioral · ~60 min · difficulty 2/5

    Mode of interview: Live behavioral interview

  5. Round 4: Senior Stakeholder + Fitment Round

    Other · ~30-45 min · difficulty 1/5

    Mode of interview: Interview format varies by team

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