Postman interview process (2026)
Round-by-round breakdown of the Postman software engineering interview across 4 levels and 19 rounds: interview mode, sample questions, and worked solutions.
Software Engineer Intern (~6-month, PPO track)
Difficulty: Medium · Timeline: 3-4 weeks · Recommended prep: 4-8 weeks · Cooldown: ~6-12 month
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Round 0: Online Assessment (HackerEarth)
Assessment · ~90 minutes · difficulty 2/5 · elimination round
Mode of interview: Online assessment
Sample question: Path Between Two Cells in a Matrix — Given an n x m grid where 1 marks an open cell and 0 a blocked cell, and a source cell (sr,sc) and destination cell (dr,dc), determine whether a path exists from source to destination moving only up/down/left/right through open cells. Print YES or NO.
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Round 1: Technical Interview 1
Onsite · 45-50 minutes · difficulty 2/5 · elimination round
Mode of interview: Onsite or virtual onsite interview
Sample question: Maximum Even-Sum Subsequence — Given an array of n integers, choose a subsequence (any subset, possibly empty) whose sum is even and as large as possible; print that maximum even sum. (The empty subsequence yields 0, which is even, so the answer is at least 0.)
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Round 2: Technical Interview 2 (Backend / Design)
System_design · 45-50 minutes · difficulty 2/5 · elimination round
Mode of interview: Live system design interview
Sample question: Design a Twitter/Forum-like App (users, posts, feed) — Design the backend for a Twitter/forum-style app: define the core entities and DB schema (users, posts, follows, likes/comments), the low-level design of key features (create post, view a user's feed), and discuss how the design supports scalability, extensibility, and code modularity/reusability. Intern-level: focus on clean entity modeling, relationships, and a sensible read/write path rather than large-scale distributed-systems tradeoffs.
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Round 3: Managerial / Hiring Manager Round
Behavioral · 45-50 minutes · difficulty 1/5
Mode of interview: Live behavioral interview
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Round 4: HR Round / Offer
Offer · ~30 minutes
Mode of interview: Offer discussion
SDE-1 (Software Engineer, entry-level / new-grad, Bengaluru)
Difficulty: Medium · Timeline: ~2 weeks · Recommended prep: 6-8 weeks · Cooldown: ~6-12 months
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Round 0: Online Assessment (HackerRank / HackerEarth)
Assessment · ~90 min · difficulty 2/5 · elimination round
Mode of interview: Online assessment
Sample question: Unique Paths in a Grid with Obstacles — Given an m x n grid where cells are free (0) or blocked (1), count the number of distinct paths from the top-left cell to the bottom-right cell moving only right or down. Postman phrases this variously as 'find a path for the caterpillar/snail through the matrix' and 'find a path between two cells in a matrix', solved with grid DP.
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Round 1: Technical Round 1 (CS fundamentals + projects)
Phone · 45-50 min · difficulty 2/5
Mode of interview: Remote phone or video interview
Sample question: Maximum Sum Subarray of Size K — Given an array of integers and an integer k, find the maximum sum of any contiguous subarray of exactly size k. Solve in O(n) with a fixed-size sliding window.
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Round 2: Technical Round 2 (coding / DS + fundamentals)
Onsite · 45-50 min · difficulty 2/5
Mode of interview: Onsite or virtual onsite interview
Sample question: Valid Parentheses (HTML tag / bracket validation via stack) — Given a string of bracket characters '()[]{}', decide whether it is well-formed (every opening bracket is closed by the matching type in the correct order). Postman's technical round asks the same idea as 'describe an approach to validate any HTML file', matching opening/closing tags with a stack.
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Round 3: Managerial / Hiring Manager round
Behavioral · 30-45 min · difficulty 1/5
Mode of interview: Live behavioral interview
SDE-2 (Software Engineer II, experienced / lateral, Bengaluru)
Difficulty: Medium · Timeline: ~2 weeks · Recommended prep: 4-6 weeks · Cooldown: ~6-12 months
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Round 0: Recruiter / technical screen
Phone · 30-45 min · difficulty 1/5 · elimination round
Mode of interview: Remote phone or video interview
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Round 1: Technical discussion + coding (DSA / project deep-dive)
Onsite · ~60 min · difficulty 3/5
Mode of interview: Onsite or virtual onsite interview
Sample question: Design Hit Counter — Design a hit counter that records hits at given timestamps and, for any query timestamp t, returns the number of hits in the past 300 seconds (the window (t-300, t]). Timestamps are monotonically non-decreasing. Implement hit(t) and getHits(t).
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Round 2: LLD / Machine coding round
Onsite · ~60 min · difficulty 3/5
Mode of interview: Onsite or virtual onsite interview
Sample question: Design an API Rate Limiter — Design a rate limiter for an API gateway: cap requests per client/API key over a window. Discuss Token Bucket vs. Fixed Window vs. Sliding Window Log/Counter, where the limiter lives (gateway vs. distributed), the counter datastore (in-memory vs. Redis), handling of bursts and race conditions across nodes, and response semantics (429 + Retry-After).
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Round 3: HLD / System Design round
System_design · ~60 min · difficulty 3/5
Mode of interview: Live system design interview
Sample question: Design a Chat / Messaging Service (Slack-like), HLD + LLD — Design a real-time chat/messaging service (Slack-like) covering both HLD and LLD: message send/receive and delivery, fan-out to channels, presence/typing, connection management (WebSocket/long-poll), the datastore schema for messages and channels, ordering and read receipts, and scaling the datastore.
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Round 4: Hiring Manager round
Behavioral · 30-45 min · difficulty 2/5
Mode of interview: Live behavioral interview
Senior Software Engineer / Senior SDE (Bengaluru)
Difficulty: Hard · Timeline: ~2 weeks · Recommended prep: 6-8 weeks · Cooldown: ~6-12 months
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Round 0: Recruiter / hiring screen
Phone · 30-45 min · difficulty 1/5 · elimination round
Mode of interview: Remote phone or video interview
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Round 1: Technical / coding + deep systems discussion
Onsite · ~60 min · difficulty 3/5
Mode of interview: Onsite or virtual onsite interview
Sample question: Restore The Array — Given a string s of digits (originally a printed array of integers, printed with no separators and no leading zeros) and an integer k, count how many arrays could have produced s, where every integer is in [1, k]. Return the count modulo 1e9+7. Solve with a 1D DP over suffixes, extending each number while it stays <= k.
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Round 2: LLD / Machine coding
Onsite · ~60 min · difficulty 4/5
Mode of interview: Onsite or virtual onsite interview
Sample question: Design Google Calendar (with async flows) — Design a calendaring system like Google Calendar: event CRUD, recurring events and exceptions, invites/RSVP, reminders/notifications, availability and conflict detection across time zones, and the asynchronous flows (reminder dispatch, notification fan-out) the interviewer probes. Cover data model, sharding, and consistency of shared calendars.
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Round 3: HLD / System Design
System_design · ~60 min · difficulty 4/5
Mode of interview: Live system design interview
Sample question: Design a Distributed Caching System — Design a distributed cache: partitioning/consistent hashing, replication and failover, eviction policies (LRU/LFU/TTL), write-through vs. write-back, cache invalidation and stampede protection, and hit-ratio/latency trade-offs. Directly matches Postman's senior 'high-level design questions based on caching' round.
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Round 4: Hiring Manager / leadership round
Behavioral · 30-45 min · difficulty 2/5
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.