DE Shaw Interview Experience for System Intern Role

Candidate Information:

Name: Vedant Singh

College: Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology, Nagpur

Department: Computer Science & Engineering (CSE)

Company: DE Shaw

Role Applied For: System Engineer Intern (2 Months)

Mode: Online

Date: 4th July

Overview of Interview Process:

DE Shaw was the first company to visit our campus for internships, although the entire process was conducted online. The company was open to ECE and EEE students with 8+ CGPA and CSE students with 7+ CGPA. The role offered was System Engineer Intern for a duration of 2 months.

The selection process consisted of the following rounds:

• Initial Screening (Online Assessment)
• Technical Interview Round

Initial Screening:

The first round was an online assessment conducted on HackerRank. It consisted of:

• 1 DSA coding question
• 10–15 MCQs

The DSA question involved graph traversal (BFS) along with prime number checking. Initially, the question appeared to be a tree-based problem, which made it a bit confusing. However, after carefully analyzing the data provided, it became clear that it was actually a graph traversal problem and BFS was the correct approach.

The MCQs were easy and mainly involved debugging questions and basic OOP concepts.

Out of all the participants, only 14 candidates were shortlisted for the next round.

Technical Round:

The technical interview focused mainly on core Computer Science fundamentals and project understanding.

I was first asked about my Gatepass Management System project, which was a web development project. Since DE Shaw is a core CSE-oriented company, the discussion quickly moved to my tech stack choices. I was asked why I used MongoDB over MySQL and which database performs better under different circumstances. I fumbled a little here, and I feel this is where I lost some confidence during the interview.

Next, I was asked the difference between authentication and authorization, which I answered satisfactorily. Then I was asked about the difference between HTTP and HTTPS.

After that, I was asked an OOP-based question to design a database connector class, which I was able to solve smoothly. I was also asked a very straightforward DSA question, “Two Sum,” for which I explained all three approaches: brute force, better, and optimal.

Towards the end, I was asked some basic questions on the difference between C and Python, and the difference between a compiler and an interpreter.

Additional Information:

After the technical round, only 4 candidates were shortlisted for the next round, and unfortunately, I was not among them. In the end, only 1 candidate received the final offer.

Closing Note:

DE Shaw clearly looks for candidates with strong Computer Science fundamentals, especially in Operating Systems, Computer Networks, DBMS, and OOP. The MongoDB vs MySQL discussion was the point where I feel my confidence dropped. Overall, the interview was a great learning experience and gave me a clear idea of how deeply core CS concepts are evaluated, even for internship roles.