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Software Engineering Fundamentals questions require understanding of core concepts and practice. PracHub provides solutions with explanations to help you master software engineering fundamentals interviews.

What difficulty level is this interview question?

This is a medium difficulty Software Engineering Fundamentals question, commonly asked during Onsite rounds at Hippocratic Ai.

What role is this question designed for?

This question is commonly asked for Software Engineer candidates at Hippocratic Ai during technical interviews.

Design an hourly call-agent scheduler | Hippocratic Ai Interview Question

Quick Overview

This question evaluates algorithmic scheduling, capacity planning, and time-windowed resource allocation skills, along with handling practical constraints such as average handle time, per-customer concurrency limits, CSV input parsing, and scalability.

Problem

You are staffing AI calling agents for a single day in Pacific Time (PT). Each customer must place a required number of outbound calls to their patients within an allowed time window during that day.

Given a CSV of customer call requirements, build a scheduler that outputs hour-by-hour agent needs:

Total agents needed each hour (across all customers)
Agents needed per customer each hour

Assume:

One agent can handle at most one call at a time .
Each call for a customer takes that customer’s average handle time (AHT) in minutes.
Calls can start at any time within the allowed window.
You may choose when within the allowed window to place calls (i.e., you can distribute the calls across the window) in order to minimize staffing.

Input CSV (define and support this schema)

Each row represents one customer’s requirements for the day:

customer_id (string)
calls_required (int)
avg_handle_time_min (float)
window_start (HH:MM, 24-hour, PT)
window_end (HH:MM, 24-hour, PT; may be later the same day; you may state how you handle an end earlier than start)
Optional: max_concurrent_calls (int; if present, you cannot schedule more than this many simultaneous calls for that customer)

Output

Produce an hour-by-hour report for hours 00:00–23:00 PT. For each hour, output:

hour_start (e.g., 09:00 )
agents_total
agents_by_customer (mapping of customer_id -> agents_needed_that_hour )

You must provide a CLI demo (required). A tiny UI (optional) can be added for bonus.

Constraints / Expectations

Reasonable runtime for up to ~10,000 customers.
Clearly document assumptions and rounding rules (e.g., how partial-hour workload turns into integer agents).
Prefer a schedule that minimizes peak agents (or state a different objective and justify it).

Quick Overview

Problem

Given a CSV of customer call requirements, build a scheduler that outputs hour-by-hour agent needs:

Total agents needed each hour (across all customers)

Agents needed per customer each hour

Assume:

One agent can handle at most one call at a time .

Each call for a customer takes that customer’s average handle time (AHT) in minutes.

Calls can start at any time within the allowed window.

You may choose when within the allowed window to place calls (i.e., you can distribute the calls across the window) in order to minimize staffing.

Input CSV (define and support this schema)

Each row represents one customer’s requirements for the day:

customer_id (string)

calls_required (int)

avg_handle_time_min (float)

window_start (HH:MM, 24-hour, PT)

window_end (HH:MM, 24-hour, PT; may be later the same day; you may state how you handle an end earlier than start)

Optional: max_concurrent_calls (int; if present, you cannot schedule more than this many simultaneous calls for that customer)

Output

Produce an hour-by-hour report for hours 00:00–23:00 PT. For each hour, output:

hour_start (e.g., 09:00 )

agents_total

agents_by_customer (mapping of customer_id -> agents_needed_that_hour )

You must provide a CLI demo (required). A tiny UI (optional) can be added for bonus.

Constraints / Expectations

Reasonable runtime for up to ~10,000 customers.

Clearly document assumptions and rounding rules (e.g., how partial-hour workload turns into integer agents).

Prefer a schedule that minimizes peak agents (or state a different objective and justify it).

Design an hourly call-agent scheduler

Quick Overview

Design an hourly call-agent scheduler

Problem

Input CSV (define and support this schema)

Output

Constraints / Expectations

Write your answer

Design an hourly call-agent scheduler

Quick Overview

Design an hourly call-agent scheduler

Problem

Input CSV (define and support this schema)

Output

Constraints / Expectations

Write your answer