IBM

IBM

Global technology and consulting firm with deep roots in enterprise IT and AI.

3 Rounds ~14 Days Medium
Start Mock Interview

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 • Behavioral • medium

Tell me about a time you had a disagreement or conflict with a team member regarding a technical decision. How did you resolve it?

#Conflict Resolution #Teamwork #Communication
Practice
Backend Engineer • Behavioral • medium

Describe a situation where you had to meet a tight, almost impossible deadline. How did you handle it?

#Time Management #Prioritization #Agile
Practice
Backend Engineer • Behavioral • medium

Tell me about a time you failed or made a significant mistake at work. What happened and what did you learn?

#Growth Mindset #Accountability
Practice
Backend Engineer • Behavioral • easy

Technology changes rapidly. How do you keep up with new backend technologies and frameworks?

#Continuous Learning #Passion for Tech
Practice
Backend Engineer • Behavioral • hard

Describe the most complex technical problem you have solved recently. Walk me through your thought process.

#Problem Solving #Architecture #Debugging
Practice
Backend Engineer • Behavioral • medium

Tell me about a time you had to persuade your team or management to adopt a new technology or technical approach.

#Communication #Influence #Innovation
Practice
Backend Engineer • Coding • easy

Given an array of integers nums and an integer target, return indices of the two numbers such that they add up to target.

#Arrays #Hash Table
Practice
Backend Engineer • Coding • easy

Given a string s containing just the characters '(', ')', '{', '}', '[' and ']', determine if the input string is valid.

#Strings #Stack
Practice
Backend Engineer • Coding • medium

Given an array of intervals where intervals[i] = [starti, endi], merge all overlapping intervals.

#Arrays #Sorting
Practice
Backend Engineer • Coding • medium

Design a data structure that follows the constraints of a Least Recently Used (LRU) cache.

#Design #Hash Table #Doubly Linked List
Practice
Backend Engineer • Coding • medium

Given an m x n 2D binary grid grid which represents a map of '1's (land) and '0's (water), return the number of islands.

#Graph #DFS #BFS
Practice
Backend Engineer • Coding • easy

Given the head of a singly linked list, reverse the list, and return the reversed list.

#Linked List
Practice
Backend Engineer • Coding • medium

Given an integer array nums and an integer k, return the k most frequent elements.

#Heap #Hash Table #Bucket Sort
Practice
Backend Engineer • Coding • medium

Given a string s, find the length of the longest substring without repeating characters.

#Sliding Window #Strings #Hash Table
Practice
Backend Engineer • Coding • easy

Given a string s, find the first non-repeating character in it and return its index. If it does not exist, return -1.

#Strings #Hash Table
Practice
Backend Engineer • System Design • medium

Design a URL Shortener service like Bitly.

#Scalability #Hashing #Databases
Practice
Backend Engineer • System Design • hard

Design a highly available distributed cache.

#Caching #Distributed Systems #Consistent Hashing
Practice
Backend Engineer • System Design • hard

Design a centralized log aggregation system for a large-scale microservices architecture.

#Logging #Microservices #Message Queues
Practice
Backend Engineer • System Design • medium

Design a scalable notification system that sends Emails, SMS, and Push Notifications.

#Asynchronous Processing #Message Queues #Microservices
Practice
Backend Engineer • System Design • hard

How would you design a rate limiter for a public API?

#API Gateway #Algorithms #Redis
Practice
Backend Engineer • System Design • hard

Design an e-commerce checkout API process that ensures a customer is never double-charged, even if network timeouts occur.

#Idempotency #Transactions #Microservices
Practice
Backend Engineer • Technical • medium

Explain the architectural differences between a Monolithic application and Microservices. When would you choose one over the other?

#Microservices #Monolith #System Design
Practice
Backend Engineer • Technical • medium

How does Spring Boot auto-configuration work under the hood?

#Java #Spring Boot
Practice
Backend Engineer • Technical • medium

Explain the lifecycle of a Spring Bean from instantiation to destruction.

#Java #Spring
Practice
Backend Engineer • Technical • hard

How do you handle transaction management in Spring Boot, and what are the different propagation behaviors?

#Spring #Transactions #SQL
Practice
Backend Engineer • Technical • medium

What is the difference between SQL and NoSQL databases? Provide an example of a use case for each.

#SQL #NoSQL #Data Modeling
Practice
Backend Engineer • Technical • medium

Explain how indexing works in a relational database like DB2 or PostgreSQL. What are the performance trade-offs?

#SQL #Performance #B-Trees
Practice
Backend Engineer • Technical • hard

How does Garbage Collection work in Java? Describe the different generations in the heap.

#Java #Memory Management #JVM
Practice
Backend Engineer • Technical • medium

What is the difference between Concurrency and Parallelism in Java? How do you implement them?

#Java #Multithreading #Concurrency
Practice
Backend Engineer • Technical • medium

Explain the CAP theorem and how it applies to distributed systems.

#CAP Theorem #Architecture
Practice
Backend Engineer • Technical • medium

How would you secure a public-facing RESTful API?

#REST #Security #OAuth #JWT
Practice
Backend Engineer • Technical • easy

What is Docker, and how does containerization differ from traditional Virtual Machines?

#Docker #Containers
Practice
Backend Engineer • Technical • medium

Explain the concepts of Pods, Deployments, and Services in Kubernetes.

#Kubernetes #Containers #Orchestration
Practice
Backend Engineer • Technical • hard

Explain the concept of Event-Driven Architecture. How does Apache Kafka fit into this model?

#Kafka #Event-Driven #Microservices
Practice
Backend Engineer • Technical • medium

What are the SOLID principles of object-oriented design? Provide a practical example of one.

#Object-Oriented Design #SOLID #Clean Code
Practice

Difficulty Radar

Based on recent AI-sourced data.

Meet Your Interviewers

The "Standard" Interviewer

Senior Engineer

Focuses on core competencies, system constraints, and clear communication.

Simulate

Unwritten Rules

Think Out Loud

Always explain your thought process before writing code or drawing architecture.

Practice Now