A Software Engineer at Freshworks plays a critical role in designing, developing, and scaling the company's suite of business software products, including flagship platforms like Freshdesk, Freshservice, and Freshsales. Freshworks is dedicated to creating business software that is intuitive, easy to set up, and highly effective for teams worldwide. As a Software Engineer, you will work on high-throughput, multi-tenant architectures that serve millions of active users globally, making your contributions directly impactful to the business's bottom line and user satisfaction. In this role, you will tackle complex engineering challenges related to system scalability, real-time data processing, and seamless user experiences. Whether you are optimizing backend APIs, designing robust database schemas, or crafting responsive user interfaces, your work ensures that Freshworks applications remain fast, reliable, and secure. The engineering culture here values rapid innovation, clean code, and a strong sense of ownership over the products you build and maintain.
Recruiter Screening
reportedInitial screening by a recruiter or an online assessment with coding challenges and CS fundamentals questions.
What to demonstrate
- Initial screening by a recruiter or an online assessment with coding challenges and CS fundamentals questions
- Depth in Data Structures & Algorithms (DSA)
How to prepare
- Be able to walk your CV end to end in two minutes, and say why this company specifically.
- Have your salary expectations, notice period and location constraints ready, and ask for the rest of the loop in writing.
Technical Interviews
reportedSeries of interviews focusing on data structures, algorithms, low-level design, and high-level design.
What to demonstrate
- Series of interviews focusing on data structures, algorithms, low-level design, and high-level design
- Depth in Data Structures & Algorithms (DSA)
How to prepare
- Answer aloud and timed: Given two arrays containing time intervals (hours), find the overlapping time duration.
- Answer aloud and timed: Implement the LFU (Least Frequently Used) Cache eviction policy with optimal time complexity.
Bar Raiser Evaluation
reportedPotential architectural evaluation round led by senior engineering leaders, depending on the team.
What to demonstrate
- Potential architectural evaluation round led by senior engineering leaders, depending on the team
- Depth in Data Structures & Algorithms (DSA)
How to prepare
- Answer aloud and timed: Solve the Word Break problem: determine if a given string can be segmented into a space-separated sequence of dictionary words.
- Answer aloud and timed: Given an array, rotate the array to the right by $k$ steps.
PracHub editorial advice for the preparation topics above.
Over-communicate Your Thought Process
When solving coding problems, talk through your approach before writing any code. This allows the interviewer to understand your logic and offer helpful guidance if you veer off track.
Clarify the Scope Early
In design rounds, the questions are intentionally ambiguous. Always ask clarifying questions about the scale of the system, expected traffic, and constraints before drawing your architecture.
State Complexity Explicitly
Always conclude your coding solutions by analyzing their time and space complexities. Proactively discuss how you might optimize the solution further, even if the interviewer does not ask.
Choose a category, try a prompt, then open its approach, worked solution or follow-up when you need it.
Find the middle element in a singly Linked List in a single pass.
Find the middle element in a singly Linked List in a single pass.
Approach
- Restate the input: its shape, its size, and what is guaranteed about it.
- Name the brute-force solution and its complexity before improving on it.
- Choose the data structure from the access pattern, not from familiarity.
- State the target complexity and say which constraint rules the naive version out.
Follow-up
- How does this change if the input no longer fits in memory?
- What is the worst case, and how likely is it on real data?
Given a perfect cube, find its cube root without using any built-in mathematical library methods.
Given a perfect cube, find its cube root without using any built-in mathematical library methods.
Approach
- Restate the input: its shape, its size, and what is guaranteed about it.
- Name the brute-force solution and its complexity before improving on it.
- Choose the data structure from the access pattern, not from familiarity.
- State the target complexity and say which constraint rules the naive version out.
Follow-up
- How does this change if the input no longer fits in memory?
- What is the worst case, and how likely is it on real data?
Given two arrays containing time intervals (hours), find the overlapping time duration.
Given two arrays containing time intervals (hours), find the overlapping time duration.
Approach
- Restate the input: its shape, its size, and what is guaranteed about it.
- Name the brute-force solution and its complexity before improving on it.
- Choose the data structure from the access pattern, not from familiarity.
- State the target complexity and say which constraint rules the naive version out.
Follow-up
- How does this change if the input no longer fits in memory?
- What is the worst case, and how likely is it on real data?
Implement the LFU (Least Frequently Used) Cache eviction policy with optimal time complexity.
Implement the LFU (Least Frequently Used) Cache eviction policy with optimal time complexity.
Approach
- Restate the input: its shape, its size, and what is guaranteed about it.
- Name the brute-force solution and its complexity before improving on it.
- Choose the data structure from the access pattern, not from familiarity.
- State the target complexity and say which constraint rules the naive version out.
Follow-up
- How does this change if the input no longer fits in memory?
- What is the worst case, and how likely is it on real data?
Solve the Word Break problem: determine if a given string can be segmented into a space-separated sequence of
Solve the Word Break problem: determine if a given string can be segmented into a space-separated sequence of dictionary words.
Approach
- Restate the input: its shape, its size, and what is guaranteed about it.
- Name the brute-force solution and its complexity before improving on it.
- Choose the data structure from the access pattern, not from familiarity.
- State the target complexity and say which constraint rules the naive version out.
Follow-up
- How does this change if the input no longer fits in memory?
- What is the worst case, and how likely is it on real data?
Given an array, rotate the array to the right by $k$ steps.
Given an array, rotate the array to the right by $k$ steps.
Approach
- Restate the input: its shape, its size, and what is guaranteed about it.
- Name the brute-force solution and its complexity before improving on it.
- Choose the data structure from the access pattern, not from familiarity.
- State the target complexity and say which constraint rules the naive version out.
Follow-up
- How does this change if the input no longer fits in memory?
- What is the worst case, and how likely is it on real data?
Explain the concept of JavaScript Closures and demonstrate how they can be used to implement currying and meth
Explain the concept of JavaScript Closures and demonstrate how they can be used to implement currying and method chaining.
Approach
- Say what the runtime actually does before reasoning about the code.
- Name what is shared across threads and what owns each piece of state.
- Identify the window where an invariant is briefly untrue.
- Distinguish a value from a reference to it, and say which one you handed out.
Follow-up
- What happens if two callers reach this at the same time?
- Where could this allocate more than you expect?
How would you optimize the performance of a web application experiencing high latency due to heavy rendering o
How would you optimize the performance of a web application experiencing high latency due to heavy rendering or asynchronous operations?
Approach
- Say what the runtime actually does before reasoning about the code.
- Name what is shared across threads and what owns each piece of state.
- Identify the window where an invariant is briefly untrue.
- Distinguish a value from a reference to it, and say which one you handed out.
Follow-up
- What happens if two callers reach this at the same time?
- Where could this allocate more than you expect?
Describe the difference between asynchronous script loading using `async` versus `defer` in HTML.
Describe the difference between asynchronous script loading using async versus defer in HTML.
Approach
- Say what the runtime actually does before reasoning about the code.
- Name what is shared across threads and what owns each piece of state.
- Identify the window where an invariant is briefly untrue.
- Distinguish a value from a reference to it, and say which one you handed out.
Follow-up
- What happens if two callers reach this at the same time?
- Where could this allocate more than you expect?
Why do you want to join Freshworks, and how do you see yourself contributing to our engineering culture?
Why do you want to join Freshworks, and how do you see yourself contributing to our engineering culture?
Approach
- Name the grain you start from and join outward from it.
- Check whether any join is one-to-many before aggregating, or the sums inflate.
- Say which index the query would use, and what makes it unusable.
- Handle the rows that do not match: that is usually the actual question.
Follow-up
- How does the query change if that join becomes one-to-many?
- What happens to this when the table is ten times larger?
Replace offset paging on the resource feed with keyset
resource holds resource_id, tenant_id, owner_user_id, title, body_ref, version, status ('draft','active','archived','deleted'), created_at, updated_at, deleted_at, with an index on (tenant_id, status, updated_at DESC, resource_id DESC). The listing endpoint returns active resources for one tenant, newest update first, 50 per page, today with LIMIT 50 OFFSET n. Tenants reach page 400 and rows are created while they read. Write the keyset query, define what the cursor carries and how it is encoded, and say which part of the index each predicate uses. Assume PostgreSQL 16.
Approach
- Name the two failures separately. OFFSET 20000 makes the server produce and discard 20,000 rows, so page cost grows with depth rather than with page size. Independently, any write that changes how many rows sort above the offset moves the window between two fetches, and the direction decides which anomaly you get: an insert lands at the head of updated_at DESC and pushes already-returned rows down past the boundary, so they are returned a second time; a delete above the offset, or a row whose updated_at is bumped above the cursor, pulls rows up and one is never returned at all. Nothing in the response reveals either.
- Write the seek: WHERE tenant_id = $1 AND status = 'active' AND (updated_at, resource_id) < ($2, $3) ORDER BY updated_at DESC, resource_id DESC LIMIT 50. The row-value comparison is one index range rather than a disjunction, and both columns are NOT NULL, which is what makes that comparison well defined.
- Map each predicate onto the index: tenant_id and status are equality on the leading columns, (updated_at, resource_id) is the range, and the ORDER BY matches the index order so no Sort node appears and the scan stops after 50 rows. The DESC in the definition only matters for mixed directions — a plain ascending btree on the same columns is read backwards for this query.
- Put both sort columns in the cursor and nothing the client can tamper with into another tenant: base64 of (updated_at, resource_id), validated server-side, with tenant_id taken from the principal.
Follow-up
- The client asks for 'jump to page 400'. What do you offer instead, and what does the honest version cost?
- Sort order becomes user-selectable across four columns. How many indexes is that, and which would you refuse to add?
Design a News Feed application, detailing the database schema, API design, and push/pull models for feed gener
Design a News Feed application, detailing the database schema, API design, and push/pull models for feed generation.
Approach
- Fix the scope first: who calls this, how often, and what they do when it fails.
- Name the read and write paths separately; they rarely have the same bottleneck.
- Choose a partition key and say what query it makes expensive.
- State the consistency you need, and where you are willing to be stale.
Follow-up
- What breaks first when traffic grows ten times?
- How does this behave when that dependency is down for an hour?
Design a real-time Ola-like Ride-Sharing database structure, focusing on spatial queries and database indexing
Design a real-time Ola-like Ride-Sharing database structure, focusing on spatial queries and database indexing.
Approach
- Fix the scope first: who calls this, how often, and what they do when it fails.
- Name the read and write paths separately; they rarely have the same bottleneck.
- Choose a partition key and say what query it makes expensive.
- State the consistency you need, and where you are willing to be stale.
Follow-up
- What breaks first when traffic grows ten times?
- How does this behave when that dependency is down for an hour?
Design a scalable, write-heavy Data Ingestion Pipeline that can handle millions of events per second.
Design a scalable, write-heavy Data Ingestion Pipeline that can handle millions of events per second.
Approach
- Fix the scope first: who calls this, how often, and what they do when it fails.
- Name the read and write paths separately; they rarely have the same bottleneck.
- Choose a partition key and say what query it makes expensive.
- State the consistency you need, and where you are willing to be stale.
Follow-up
- What breaks first when traffic grows ten times?
- How does this behave when that dependency is down for an hour?
Design a distributed Rate Limiter to protect APIs from abuse and ensure high availability.
Design a distributed Rate Limiter to protect APIs from abuse and ensure high availability.
Approach
- Fix the scope first: who calls this, how often, and what they do when it fails.
- Name the read and write paths separately; they rarely have the same bottleneck.
- Choose a partition key and say what query it makes expensive.
- State the consistency you need, and where you are willing to be stale.
Follow-up
- What breaks first when traffic grows ten times?
- How does this behave when that dependency is down for an hour?
Explain how you would design a secure Document Upload System using cloud storage and pre-signed URLs.
Explain how you would design a secure Document Upload System using cloud storage and pre-signed URLs.
Approach
- Fix the scope first: who calls this, how often, and what they do when it fails.
- Name the read and write paths separately; they rarely have the same bottleneck.
- Choose a partition key and say what query it makes expensive.
- State the consistency you need, and where you are willing to be stale.
Follow-up
- What breaks first when traffic grows ten times?
- How does this behave when that dependency is down for an hour?
Create a dynamic UI component in React without using any external libraries, and explain how you would refacto
Create a dynamic UI component in React without using any external libraries, and explain how you would refactor it to use plain CSS if required.
Approach
- Clarify what is being asked and what a complete answer contains.
- State your assumptions explicitly before working the problem.
- Say what you would check first and why it is the highest-information step.
- Work from the requirement backwards to the design.
Follow-up
- What assumption would you test first?
- How would you know your answer was wrong?
Listing latency scales with page size, not with filters
The tenant listing endpoint reads resource filtered by tenant_id and status, ordered by updated_at DESC, and returns each row plus the owner's display name from app_user and the actor of that resource's latest resource_revision. p99 is 55 ms at 10 rows per page and 1.4 s at 200. Database telemetry shows 401 statements per request, each under 1 ms, and nothing in the slow-query log. Diagnose the cause and give the fix, stating the statement count per request and the p99 you expect afterwards.
Approach
- Read the counters before forming a theory. 401 statements for 200 rows is one driver query plus two per row, and sub-millisecond execution with an empty slow-query log rules out a bad plan. The time is round trips, which is why it is invisible in every per-query metric and scales with rows returned rather than with filter selectivity.
- Name the two per-row statements from their normalised text: a single-row app_user lookup by user_id, and a resource_revision lookup by resource_id ordered by version DESC LIMIT 1. Confirm by dropping those two response fields and watching the statement count fall to one. That locates the calls in the serialisation layer, not the repository.
- Check that the arithmetic accounts for the whole gap. Measure one round trip to the replica in isolation; 400 trips at roughly 3 ms of network plus 0.2 ms of execution is about 1.3 s on top of a 55 ms baseline, which matches. If the multiplication had fallen short, the N+1 would only be part of the story and you would keep looking.
- Batch both lookups. Collect owner_user_ids and resource_ids from the driver query, then issue WHERE tenant_id = $1 AND user_id = ANY($2) for the users, and PostgreSQL's SELECT DISTINCT ON (resource_id) ... WHERE resource_id = ANY($2) ORDER BY resource_id, version DESC for the latest revision, which the UNIQUE (resource_id, version) index serves directly. On an engine without DISTINCT ON, use a lateral join or a row_number window. Three statements per request at any page size.
Follow-up
- The page size is capped at 200 today. What breaks first if it is raised to 2,000, and is it still this bug?
- How do you stop the next N+1 from reaching production, given that no individual query is slow and the endpoint's tests pass?
Built from the rounds and topics Freshworks candidates report.
Prepare, practise & reflect
One practical outcome each day. Spend longer where you need it.
0 / 7 done01Map the Freshworks loop
- Write out the reported sequence: Recruiter Screening, Technical Interviews, Bar Raiser Evaluation.
- For each round, write one sentence on what it is judging, from the description above, and mark the one you are least ready for.
Deliverable: A one-page map of the 3 reported rounds, with the weakest marked.
02Work Data Structures & Algorithms (DSA)
- Spend the session on Data Structures & Algorithms (DSA), which Freshworks candidates report being tested on.
- Write one worked example in Data Structures & Algorithms (DSA) and time yourself on it.
Deliverable: One timed worked example in Data Structures & Algorithms (DSA).
03Work System Design
- Spend the session on System Design, which Freshworks candidates report being tested on.
- Write one worked example in System Design and time yourself on it.
Deliverable: One timed worked example in System Design.
04Work Problem Solving (algorithmic)
- Spend the session on Problem Solving (algorithmic), which Freshworks candidates report being tested on.
- Write one worked example in Problem Solving (algorithmic) and time yourself on it.
Deliverable: One timed worked example in Problem Solving (algorithmic).
05Answer out loud: Data Structures & Algorithms
- Answer aloud, timed: Find the middle element in a singly Linked List in a single pass.
- Answer aloud, timed: Given a perfect cube, find its cube root without using any built-in mathematical library methods.
Deliverable: Spoken answers to 2 reported Data Structures & Algorithms question(s), under time.
06Answer out loud: System Design & Architecture
- Answer aloud, timed: Design a News Feed application, detailing the database schema, API design, and push/pull models for feed generation.
- Answer aloud, timed: Design a real-time Ola-like Ride-Sharing database structure, focusing on spatial queries and database indexing.
Deliverable: Spoken answers to 2 reported System Design & Architecture question(s), under time.
07Answer out loud: Front-End & UI Engineering
- Answer aloud, timed: Explain the concept of JavaScript Closures and demonstrate how they can be used to implement currying and method chaining.
- Answer aloud, timed: How would you optimize the performance of a web application experiencing high latency due to heavy rendering or asynchronous operations?
Deliverable: Spoken answers to 2 reported Front-End & UI Engineering question(s), under time.
Expand any day for tasks and deliverables. Your progress is saved on this device.
Behavioural rounds judge the decision you made and what it cost.
Describe a time when you had to defend a technical decision to a peer or manager who disagreed with your appro
Describe a time when you had to defend a technical decision to a peer or manager who disagreed with your approach. How did you handle it?
Approach
- Pick a story where you made the decision, not one where you watched it.
- State the situation in two sentences and spend the rest on the reasoning.
- Give the blast radius: what could have broken, and what you measured.
- Name the disagreement and how you resolved it with evidence.
Follow-up
- What would you do differently if you ran that again?
- How did you know your change caused the improvement?
How do you prioritize tasks and manage your time when working under tight deadlines or changing requirements?
How do you prioritize tasks and manage your time when working under tight deadlines or changing requirements?
Approach
- Pick a story where you made the decision, not one where you watched it.
- State the situation in two sentences and spend the rest on the reasoning.
- Give the blast radius: what could have broken, and what you measured.
- Name the disagreement and how you resolved it with evidence.
Follow-up
- What would you do differently if you ran that again?
- How did you know your change caused the improvement?
Talk about a challenging project from your past experience. What were the technical bottlenecks, and how did y
Talk about a challenging project from your past experience. What were the technical bottlenecks, and how did you resolve them?
Approach
- Pick a story where you made the decision, not one where you watched it.
- State the situation in two sentences and spend the rest on the reasoning.
- Give the blast radius: what could have broken, and what you measured.
- Name the disagreement and how you resolved it with evidence.
Follow-up
- What would you do differently if you ran that again?
- How did you know your change caused the improvement?
- 01
Describe a time when you had to defend a technical decision to a peer or manager who disagreed with your approach. How did you handle it?
- 02
How do you prioritize tasks and manage your time when working under tight deadlines or changing requirements?
- 03
Talk about a challenging project from your past experience. What were the technical bottlenecks, and how did you resolve them?
How difficult are the technical interviews at Freshworks?
The technical interviews are generally rated as moderate to difficult. They focus heavily on core computer science fundamentals, practical coding, and realistic system design scenarios rather than highly abstract or niche competitive programming riddles.
Freshworks Software Engineer candidate reports ↗What is the typical timeline from the first interview to an offer?
The process typically takes between two to four weeks. However, during dedicated weekend hiring drives, the entire interview process can sometimes be completed in a single day, with offers discussed shortly after.
Freshworks Software Engineer candidate reports ↗Does Freshworks support remote work for Software Engineers?
Freshworks has transitioned toward a hybrid work model, with a strong emphasis on collaboration in their primary offices, such as Chennai and Bengaluru. Be sure to clarify the specific location and hybrid expectations with your recruiter early in the process.
Freshworks Software Engineer candidate reports ↗How should I prepare for the system design rounds?
Focus on practical, real-world architectures. Understand how to design common systems like rate limiters, feed generators, and data pipelines. Be prepared to discuss database schema details, API endpoints, and architectural trade-offs.
Freshworks Software Engineer candidate reports ↗What topics does Freshworks test in interviews?
Freshworks interviews most often cover Problem Solving, System Design, Stakeholder Management, Communication Skills, and Data Structures & Algorithms (DSA). The exact emphasis depends on the specific role you apply for.
Freshworks Software Engineer candidate reports ↗Sources & methodology 3 sources ↗
Official role evidence, timestamped platform data and clearly labeled preparation advice.
- 01Freshworks Software Engineer candidate reports ↗
Company-reported rounds, questions and FAQ.
candidate · Accessed 2026-09-22 - 02PracHub Software Engineer practice ↗
PracHub practice material, not company-reported.
platform · Accessed 2026-09-22 - 03PracHub preparation framework ↗
PracHub preparation guidance.
platform · Accessed 2026-09-22
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