D. E. Shaw India interview process (2026)

Round-by-round breakdown of the D. E. Shaw India software engineering interview across 4 levels and 13 rounds: interview mode, sample questions, and worked solutions.

D. E. Shaw India salary & ratings · All interview processes

Technology Developer Intern / Software Developer Intern (Summer, ~2 months)

Difficulty: Hard · Timeline: Campus drives run in the placement season (typically Jul-Sep · Recommended prep: 6-10 weeks · Cooldown: No formally published cooldown; typically re-apply the next

  1. Round 0: Online Assessment (HackerRank)

    Assessment · ~90-95 minutes · difficulty 3/5 · elimination round

    Mode of interview: Online assessment · HackerRank

    Sample question: Remove K Digits (Lexicographically Smallest After k Deletions) — Given an n-digit number as a string (n up to 10^5) and an integer k, remove exactly k digits so the resulting number is the smallest possible; return it with no leading zeros ("0" if everything is removed). Equivalent DE-Shaw phrasing: 'given a string and an integer k, return the lexicographically smallest string after at most k deletions.'

  2. Round 1: Technical Interview 1 (DSA + CS fundamentals)

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

    Mode of interview: Live interview · HackerRank CodePair

    Sample question: Insert Delete GetRandom O(1) — Design a data structure supporting insert(val), remove(val), and getRandom() each in average O(1). insert/remove return whether the set changed; getRandom returns a uniformly random current element.

  3. Round 2: Technical Interview 2 (DSA + OOP/DBMS + fit)

    Onsite · ~45-90 minutes · difficulty 3/5 · elimination round

    Mode of interview: Onsite or virtual onsite interview

    Sample question: Best Time to Buy and Sell Stock — Given an array of daily prices, find the maximum profit achievable from a single buy followed by a later sell. Return 0 if no profit is possible.

Member Technical Staff / Member Technical (SDE-1, entry / new-grad)

Difficulty: Hard · Timeline: 4 weeks · Recommended prep: 6-10 weeks · Cooldown: ~6-12 months

  1. Round 0: Online Assessment (HackerRank)

    Assessment · ~50-90 min · difficulty 3/5 · elimination round

    Mode of interview: Online assessment

    Sample question: Binary Tree Cameras — Given the root of a binary tree, install cameras on tree nodes where each camera monitors its parent, itself, and its immediate children. Return the minimum number of cameras needed to monitor all nodes.

  2. Round 1: Technical Interview 1 (HackerRank CodePair, video)

    Phone · ~45-90 min · difficulty 3/5 · elimination round

    Mode of interview: Remote phone or video interview

    Sample question: Search in Rotated Sorted Array — Given an ascending array of distinct integers rotated at an unknown pivot, and a target value, return the index of the target in O(log n) time or -1 if it is absent.

  3. Round 2: Onsite Technical Round(s) (loop)

    Onsite · ~60 min · difficulty 4/5

    Mode of interview: Onsite or virtual onsite interview

    Sample question: Kth Smallest Number in a Multiplication Table — Given m, n and k, consider the m-by-n multiplication table where cell (i, j) = i*j. Return the k-th smallest value in this table.

  4. Round 3: HR / Managerial Round

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

    Mode of interview: Live behavioral interview

Senior Member Technical Staff / Senior Member, Tech (SDE-2, experienced)

Difficulty: Hard · Timeline: ~4 weeks · Recommended prep: 8-12 weeks · Cooldown: ~6-12 months

  1. Round 0: Telephonic / Online Coding Screen (HackerRank)

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

    Mode of interview: Online assessment

    Sample question: Number of Islands (with modifications) — Given an m x n binary grid where 1 is land and 0 is water, count the number of islands (maximal groups of 1s connected 4-directionally). DE Shaw asks it with modifications layered on top (e.g. altered connectivity/queries).

  2. Round 1: Coding & Problem Solving Round 1

    Onsite · ~60 min · difficulty 4/5

    Mode of interview: Onsite or virtual onsite interview

    Sample question: Maximum of Minimum for Every Window Size — Given an array of n integers, for every window size k from 1 to n compute the minimum of each contiguous window of that size, and output the maximum such minimum for each k. Solve in O(n) using previous/next smaller elements.

  3. Round 2: Multithreading / Concurrency Round

    System_design · ~60 min · difficulty 4/5

    Mode of interview: Live system design interview

    Sample question: Design a reliable, low-latency message delivery system for a trading application — Design the messaging backbone for a trading application: guarantee reliable, ordered, low-latency delivery of market/order messages. Discuss transport choice, ordering and dedup, backpressure, retries/acks, failure recovery, and how you keep tail latency bounded under bursty load.

  4. Round 3: Coding & Problem Solving Round 2 / Design & LLD

    Onsite · ~60 min · difficulty 4/5

    Mode of interview: Onsite or virtual onsite interview

    Sample question: Design a migration from RDBMS to NoSQL for a market-data pipeline — You must move a large relational market-data store to a NoSQL system. Discuss migration challenges: data modeling / denormalization, consistency and dual-write during cutover, backfill of terabytes of historical data, query-pattern shifts, and rollback strategy.

  5. Round 4: HR / Managerial Round

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

    Mode of interview: Live behavioral interview

Lead, Tech (SDE-3 / Lead)

Difficulty: Hard · Timeline: Similar batch-based process, ~2-4+ weeks (inferred; no level · Recommended prep: Advanced DSA + deep concurrency/low-late · Cooldown: Unknown / not published.

  1. Round 0: Technical loop (coding + concurrency + design) + leadership discussion

    Onsite · ~60-min · difficulty 4/5

    Mode of interview: Onsite or virtual onsite interview

    Sample question: MST with 0/1 Edge Weights on a Complete Graph — In a complete graph on V vertices, a given set of E edges have weight 0 and every remaining pair of vertices is connected by an edge of weight 1. Compute the weight of the minimum spanning tree. (Answer = number of connected components formed by the 0-weight edges, minus 1.)

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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.