Oracle Software Engineer Interview Experience — Full OCI Loop, Rejected After a Short HM Round

Oracle·Software Engineer·Oct 2026
OnsiteTechnical ScreenRejectedmedium

Phone screen: a sliding window problem, find the shortest sub-array whose sum is greater than or equal to a given target, except that duplicate numbers are only counted once (e.g. sum([3,3,2]) = 5). There was also one regular BQ question.

VO:

Round 1: LC 200 plus a BQ. The follow-up asked me to write it with BFS, and they also asked about Making A Large Island, where I walked through my approach.

Round 2: a BQ, which was essentially coin change, i.e. unbounded knapsack. The follow-up asked how I would change it to 0/1 knapsack (I went straight to the 1D space-compression approach for my first version). Then they asked some open-ended follow-up questions, but I don't remember them well.

Round 3: it was supposed to be the HM round with system design, but he only asked me to deep dive into my projects. At the start he said he might have me draw a diagram, but in the end I didn't draw anything at all (maybe that's why I failed: he wasn't interested in the project I talked about, or thought it didn't match?). The one-hour interview ended fifteen minutes early.

Round 4: a DS from another team interviewed me, pure BQ.

I figured I had better than even odds of passing (though during the interview I also felt the third round might be a problem). Today I got the rejection email. Time to move on.

Published

Curated and edited by PracHub

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Interview at a glance

Company
Oracle
Role
Software Engineer
Rounds
Technical Screen → Onsite
Outcome
Rejected
Difficulty
medium
Interview date
Oct 2026
Questions from this interview
4 questions

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