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Also forBackend EngineerBackend DeveloperFull-Stack EngineerBackend and software engineering loops are the ones most prep material is written for, and the weighting is genuinely different from every other role here: coding rounds carry the most signal, particularly at earlier levels. System design enters from mid-level and becomes decisive at senior. The material is broad rather than deep in any one infrastructure area.
Two or more coding rounds spanning the standard pattern set, a system design round from mid-level upward, and a behavioral round. Many loops — and most of the ones run in India — also include a low-level design or machine coding round, where you design the classes for something like a parking lot or a vending machine. Cloud and operational depth is expected to be practical rather than specialist — you should be able to reason about a database and a cache without being asked to run either.
Preparing only algorithms. Behavioral rounds eliminate more candidates at senior level than coding does, the system design round is where the level is usually decided once coding is a pass, and the low-level design round catches people who have never had to justify a class boundary out loud.
Prefer a sequence to a catalogue?
The 6-week Software Engineer study plan orders this material week by week, easiest first, with a free first week and progress derived from what you have already completed.
Fully unlocked, solutions included. Enough to see whether the format suits you.
Broad questions with no system to draw. Free, and frequently where this loop is decided.
Easiest first. 43 in total for this role.
Symptoms with no cause attached. 6 in total for this role, easiest first.
92 coding questions match this role. Easiest first.
At senior level it eliminates more candidates than the technical rounds do. Free interactive guides to the questions that come up most.
Pattern coverage matters more than volume. Two pointers, sliding window, hash-map lookups, binary search over an answer space, tree traversal, graph search, heaps and dynamic programming cover the large majority of what gets asked, and working carefully through each pattern transfers further than grinding a long list.
From mid-level upward it is usually part of the loop, and from senior level it typically decides the level offered. Coding becomes a threshold to pass rather than the discriminator.
If the loop includes a machine coding or object-oriented design round, yes — it rewards a different skill from either coding or system design. The prompts are mundane on purpose (a parking lot, an elevator, a chess game), so the assessment is entirely about class responsibilities, which rules you put behind an interface, and whether the design survives a requirement added in the last five minutes. Working through three or four of the standard prompts covers most of the ground, because the underlying patterns repeat.