Round-2 First, interviewer asked me how good I am in different programming languages, especially in Java. I frankly said that I use python generally since I have to code in that for my academic assignments, but used java in summer, and I am good with OOPS in it. With him seeming that I was good at Java, he proceeded to go with that language and gave me the "first non-duplicate character in the string question". Since I luckily just used dictionary, I proceeded to go with that approach. First, i explained to him my intuitive though approach of storing the count values of char as they occur inside the string, in a hashmap, and then serially check in the hashmap if any key value has 1, and as soon as we get that key char, we return it. Interviewer approved to that approach and asked me to proceed to code it. Now here came the twist. I was actually not ready with Java! I even struggled to initialize hashmap of java.utils. Luckily, Interviewer was chill and I seek his help, but ultimately, I asked if I can switch to python (the point after which i felt really embarassed and a bit disappinted and underconfident about myself). He agreed to it, and I quickly coded my approach in python in 3-4 minutes and passed all the given test-cases. He then asked if I can think of more test-cases to check for code's correctness, especially the edge cases. I tried making 2-3 more, and he was kind of happy, but I missed the case of passing an empty string, which he explained that i should have done it. He was overall satisfied with me and we proceeded with system design part. he asked me about different components of any software system we would design, and then we discussed the same explicitly on a heart-rate monitoring machine. We had kinda long discussion, and I actually didn't had knowledge about design patterns or architecture, but was able to explain different possible requirements and solutions and the ways of designing the same. He liked my thought process and even explained about where I could have improved. He said we had 10 min extra discussion, so he was in a hurry, but seemed overall satisfied. Got selected finally.

Last was an HR round, where a VP took my round, first asking for my introduction. Overall it was resume grilling and behavioral testing, where he asked to me about my experiences, and the challenges I faced during it. He then asked specifically about what if I don't get the role I am interested in, since I actually worked recently with LLMs but their stack was more of pure SDE (That didn't meant he didn't had AI knowledge, he indeed had it, and even asked to me regarding that in my former section). To that, i replied that I generally get interested if the workis quite important, especially if related to core backbone of the company, or if its impactful to society. If otherwise I don't get interest in my work, i would just tell my mentor or seniors about any suggestions from my side to make it more interesting or to openly tell where I am more interested in. Overall, VP was quite happy with my replies, and that's how my interview went.