EY
Ernst & Young Global Limited, a multinational professional services partnership.
4 Rounds
~21 Days
Medium
The Interview Loop
Recruiter Screen (30 min)
Standard fit check, behavioral questions, and resume overview.
Technical Loop (3-4 Rounds)
Deep dive into domain knowledge, coding, and system design.
Interview Question Bank
Backend Engineer
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Behavioral
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medium
Tell me about a time you had to explain a complex technical architectural decision to a non-technical stakeholder, such as an EY partner or a client.
#Stakeholder Management
#Communication
#Consulting
Backend Engineer
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Behavioral
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medium
Describe a situation where you strongly disagreed with a senior engineer or architect on a technical approach. How did you resolve it?
#Conflict Resolution
#Teamwork
#Professionalism
Backend Engineer
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Behavioral
•
medium
Tell me about a time you realized you were going to miss a critical project deadline. How did you handle the communication with the client and your team?
#Project Management
#Accountability
#Communication
Backend Engineer
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Behavioral
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easy
EY places a strong emphasis on diversity and inclusiveness. Can you share an example of how you fostered an inclusive environment in your previous engineering team?
#Diversity
#Inclusion
#Team Culture
Backend Engineer
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Behavioral
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easy
Consulting often requires adapting to new client environments quickly. Describe a time you had to rapidly learn a new technology or domain to deliver a project.
#Continuous Learning
#Agility
#Consulting
Backend Engineer
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Behavioral
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medium
Tell me about a time you identified a process bottleneck or technical debt and took the initiative to improve it. What was the impact?
#Initiative
#Process Improvement
#Technical Debt
Backend Engineer
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Coding
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easy
Given an array of integers and an integer target, return indices of the two numbers such that they add up to target. Assume exactly one solution exists.
#Arrays
#Hash Table
Backend Engineer
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Coding
•
easy
Given a string containing just the characters '(', ')', '{', '}', '[' and ']', determine if the input string is valid. This is often used in our tax formula parsing engines.
#Strings
#Stack
Backend Engineer
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Coding
•
medium
Given an array of intervals where intervals[i] = [starti, endi], merge all overlapping intervals. We use this logic to consolidate billable hours or tax periods.
#Arrays
#Sorting
Backend Engineer
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Coding
•
medium
Find the Kth largest element in an unsorted array. Note that it is the kth largest element in the sorted order, not the kth distinct element.
#Arrays
#Heap
#Divide and Conquer
Backend Engineer
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Coding
•
easy
Write a function to reverse a singly linked list.
#Linked Lists
#Pointers
Backend Engineer
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Coding
•
medium
Write a SQL query to find the second highest salary from an Employee table.
#SQL
#Subqueries
#Aggregation
Backend Engineer
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Coding
•
medium
Given an array of strings, group the anagrams together. You can return the answer in any order.
#Strings
#Hash Table
#Sorting
Backend Engineer
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Coding
•
medium
Given a binary search tree (BST), find the lowest common ancestor (LCA) node of two given nodes in the BST.
#Trees
#Binary Search Tree
#Recursion
Backend Engineer
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Coding
•
medium
Write a SQL query using window functions to calculate a running total of transaction amounts per client, ordered by transaction date.
#SQL
#Window Functions
#Data Analysis
Backend Engineer
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Coding
•
medium
Given a string s, find the length of the longest substring without repeating characters.
#Strings
#Sliding Window
#Hash Table
Backend Engineer
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Coding
•
medium
Design and implement a data structure for Least Recently Used (LRU) cache. It should support get and put operations in O(1) time.
#Design
#Hash Table
#Doubly-Linked List
Backend Engineer
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System Design
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medium
Design a highly available and tamper-proof audit logging system for a financial services application.
#Microservices
#Databases
#Security
#Event Sourcing
Backend Engineer
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System Design
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hard
Design a document ingestion and processing pipeline for millions of tax forms uploaded by clients during peak tax season.
#Scalability
#Asynchronous Processing
#Cloud Storage
#Queues
Backend Engineer
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System Design
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hard
Design a scalable REST API for a client portal that handles millions of requests. How do you manage rate limiting and caching?
#API Design
#Caching
#Rate Limiting
#Load Balancing
Backend Engineer
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System Design
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hard
Design a real-time fraud detection system for processing credit card transactions.
#Stream Processing
#Machine Learning Integration
#Low Latency
Backend Engineer
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System Design
•
medium
Design a distributed cache system for a high-traffic financial reporting dashboard.
#Caching
#Distributed Systems
#Data Consistency
Backend Engineer
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System Design
•
medium
Design a Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) system for an enterprise application used by auditors, managers, and clients.
#Security
#Database Schema
#Authorization
Backend Engineer
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System Design
•
medium
Design a notification system that sends email, SMS, and in-app alerts to clients regarding upcoming compliance deadlines.
#Asynchronous Processing
#Third-party Integration
#Scalability
Backend Engineer
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Technical
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medium
Explain the difference between clustered and non-clustered indexes in a relational database. When would you use one over the other?
#SQL
#Performance Tuning
#Database Internals
Backend Engineer
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Technical
•
medium
How do you handle transaction management in Spring Boot or .NET Core? Explain propagation levels.
#Java
#C#
#Spring Boot
#.NET
#Transactions
Backend Engineer
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Technical
•
medium
What is the N+1 query problem? How do you identify and resolve it in an ORM like Hibernate or Entity Framework?
#ORM
#SQL
#Performance Optimization
Backend Engineer
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Technical
•
medium
Explain the CAP theorem. How does it influence your database choices when building a distributed financial ledger?
#Architecture
#Databases
#CAP Theorem
Backend Engineer
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Technical
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hard
How do you secure a microservice architecture? Explain how OAuth2 and JWT work in a distributed environment.
#Microservices
#Authentication
#Authorization
#JWT
Backend Engineer
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Technical
•
medium
Explain the Circuit Breaker pattern. In a microservices architecture, when and why would you implement it?
#Microservices
#Resilience
#Design Patterns
Backend Engineer
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Technical
•
medium
What are the core differences between RabbitMQ and Apache Kafka? Which would you choose for an event-driven audit system and why?
#Message Brokers
#Kafka
#RabbitMQ
#Event Driven Architecture
Backend Engineer
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Technical
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hard
How does garbage collection work in your primary language (Java or C#)? How would you identify and troubleshoot a memory leak in a production backend service?
#Memory Management
#Garbage Collection
#Debugging
Backend Engineer
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Technical
•
medium
Explain the principles of SOLID design. Give a practical example of how you applied the Dependency Inversion Principle in a recent project.
#Design Patterns
#SOLID
#Clean Code
#OOP
Backend Engineer
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Technical
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hard
How do you implement idempotency in a REST API, specifically for a payment or transaction creation endpoint?
#REST
#Idempotency
#Distributed Systems
#Payments
Backend Engineer
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Technical
•
medium
Discuss the pros and cons of monolithic vs. microservices architectures. In what scenario would you recommend a client stick with a monolith?
#Microservices
#Monolith
#System Architecture
Difficulty Radar
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Senior EngineerFocuses on core competencies, system constraints, and clear communication.
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