Zeta interview process (2026)

Round-by-round breakdown of the Zeta software engineering interview across 4 levels and 16 rounds: interview mode, sample questions, and worked solutions.

Zeta salary & ratings · All interview processes

SDE Intern (6-month Software Development Engineer Internship)

Difficulty: Medium · Timeline: ~2-3 hours · Recommended prep: 4-8 weeks · Cooldown: ~6-12 months

  1. Round 0: Online Coding Assessment

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

    Mode of interview: Online assessment · HackerRank

    Sample question: Course Schedule — There are numCourses courses labeled 0..numCourses-1. Given a list of prerequisite pairs [a, b] meaning you must take course b before course a, determine whether it is possible to finish all courses (i.e., the prerequisite graph has no cycle). Print 1 if possible, else 0.

  2. Round 1: DS/Algo Technical Interview

    Phone · ~45-60 min · difficulty 2/5 · elimination round

    Mode of interview: Remote phone or video interview

    Sample question: Perfect Squares — Given a positive integer n, return the least number of perfect-square numbers (1, 4, 9, 16, ...) that sum to n. Expected O(n*sqrt(n)) DP.

  3. Round 2: CS Fundamentals + Low-Level Design Round

    Onsite · ~45-50 min · difficulty 2/5 · elimination round

    Mode of interview: Onsite or virtual onsite interview

    Sample question: Design Ludo (Low-Level Design / Machine Coding) — Design the low-level architecture of the board game Ludo. Start by discussing the rules, the basic flow of the design, and constraints, then write the class design / pseudocode. Expect follow-ups on OOP pillars (encapsulation, inheritance), identifying and fixing bugs in your code, and modeling players, tokens, board, dice, and turn management.

  4. Round 3: HR / Fitment Round

    Behavioral · ~30 min · difficulty 1/5

    Mode of interview: Live behavioral interview

SDE-1 (Backend)

Difficulty: Medium · Timeline: ~1-2 weeks · Recommended prep: 4-8 weeks · Cooldown: 6-12 month

  1. Round 0: Online Assessment (campus/off-campus; CodeJudge reported)

    Assessment · ~90 minutes · difficulty 2/5 · elimination round

    Mode of interview: Online assessment

    Sample question: Increasing Triplet Subsequence — Given an integer array, determine whether there exist indices i < j < k with nums[i] < nums[j] < nums[k]. The interviewer pushed from O(n^2) to a prefix-array O(n) and finally to O(1) extra space in linear time.

  2. Round 1: DSA / Problem-Solving Interview

    Onsite · ~45-60 minutes · difficulty 2/5 · elimination round

    Mode of interview: Onsite or virtual onsite interview

    Sample question: Zeta Coins Division (Coin Splitting DP) — Given n Zeta coins, a coin of value n can be exchanged for coins of value n/2, n/3 and n/4 (integer division). Return the maximum total value obtainable by choosing at each step whether to keep or split a coin: f(n) = max(n, f(n/2)+f(n/3)+f(n/4)). Example: n=12 -> 13.

  3. Round 2: Technical + LLD / CS Fundamentals

    Onsite · ~50-60 minutes · difficulty 2/5 · elimination round

    Mode of interview: Onsite or virtual onsite interview

    Sample question: Implement an LFU Cache (get/put class) — Design and fully code a Least-Frequently-Used cache. First present the put/get logic (evict least-frequently-used, tie-break by least-recently-used), then implement the whole class with O(1) get and put using a hashmap of nodes plus frequency buckets.

  4. Round 3: Fitment / Hiring Manager Round

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

    Mode of interview: Live behavioral interview

SDE-2 (Backend / Frontend)

Difficulty: Medium · Timeline: ~1-2 weeks · Recommended prep: 6-8 weeks · Cooldown: Not documented publicly.

  1. Round 0: Recruiter / HR Screen

    Phone · ~30 minutes · elimination round

    Mode of interview: Remote phone or video interview

  2. Round 1: DSA / Problem-Solving (or JS Deep Dive for Frontend)

    Onsite · ~60-90 minutes · difficulty 2/5 · elimination round

    Mode of interview: Onsite or virtual onsite interview

    Sample question: Maximum Candies Allocated to K Children — Given piles candies[i] and integer k, each child must receive the same number of candies and a pile can only be split (never merged). Return the maximum candies each child can get, or 0 if k children cannot be served.

  3. Round 2: LLD / Machine Coding

    Onsite · ~60-90 minutes · difficulty 3/5 · elimination round

    Mode of interview: Onsite or virtual onsite interview

    Sample question: Cab Booking Platform (LLD, Uber/Ola-style) — Design and code a cab-booking platform. Locations are (x,y) coordinates; a rider is matched to the nearest available driver within a max pickup distance (Euclidean). Support rider/driver registration, driver location updates, availability toggle, booking a ride (one driver per cab, no sharing), ending a trip, and fetching ride history. Interviewer expects working, extensible, SOLID-compliant code with good data modeling.

  4. Round 3: Technical / System Design + Behavioral

    Behavioral · ~45-60 minutes · difficulty 2/5

    Mode of interview: Live behavioral interview

    Sample question: Airplane Reservation System (LLD) — Design the low-level model for an airplane reservation system spanning multiple airlines: users search and dynamically select flights across airlines, view seat availability, reserve/cancel seats, and handle concurrency on seat holds. Provide entities, class relationships and core booking APIs.

Senior Software Engineer (SDE-3)

Difficulty: Hard · Timeline: ~1-2 weeks · Recommended prep: 8-10 weeks · Cooldown: Not documented publicly.

  1. Round 0: DSA / Problem-Solving

    Onsite · ~60 minutes · difficulty 2/5 · elimination round

    Mode of interview: Onsite or virtual onsite interview

    Sample question: House Robber — Given an integer array representing money in a row of houses, return the maximum you can rob without robbing two adjacent houses, using O(1)-space DP.

  2. Round 1: Low-Level Design (LLD)

    Onsite · ~60-75 minutes · difficulty 3/5 · elimination round

    Mode of interview: Onsite or virtual onsite interview

    Sample question: Bus Booking System (LLD, Redbus-style) — Design and code a bus reservation platform like Redbus. Support getBusDetails(), checkAvailability(), bookSeat(), cancelBooking() and makeBooking(), including multi-stop bookings where a seat is occupied only for the boarding-to-drop segment. Focus on clean OOD, seat/leg modeling and concurrency on seat reservation.

  3. Round 2: High-Level / System Design at Scale

    System_design · ~60-90 minutes · difficulty 3/5 · elimination round

    Mode of interview: Live system design interview

    Sample question: Multiple Task Management System / Scheduler (HLD) — Design a high-level task-management/scheduler system supporting task creation and assignment, prioritization, deadlines, status updates, tracking, and user authentication. Discuss the task/user/scheduler decomposition, prioritization strategy, persistence, and how to scale scheduling and notifications.

  4. Round 3: Hiring Manager / Cultural Fit

    Behavioral · ~45 minutes · difficulty 2/5

    Mode of interview: Live behavioral interview

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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.