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Razorpay

Razorpay is described as a machine-coding-first process: a coding test or DSA screen, a build-it-yourself low-level design round, a system design round for SDE-2 and above, then hiring manager and HR. Almost everything here comes from prep guides; the only candidate report read is an undated campus internship page.

  • 7 rounds
  • 2-4 weeks (two guides)
  • 2 design answers
  • 4 coding answers
Start with round 1 Browse every question
  1. Screen
  2. OA
  3. DSA
  4. Machine coding
  5. System design
  6. Manager
  7. HR
  8. People rounds

The process, round by round

Reported by candidates and, where we found one, the company itself. Each round shows how well it is reported. Processes change by team, level and year.

  1. Recruiter screen

    Recruiter or phone screen15-30 min

    Prep guides

    A short intro call about your background, current role and interest in Razorpay, with room to ask about the team.

    • role fit
    • motivation
    • compensation basics
    What can be asked in a recruiter or phone screen round

    A short call that decides whether you move on. Part resume and motivation, sometimes one easy coding or fundamentals question in a shared editor.

    • Walk me through your resume and your best project

      Give a two minute spine, not a life story: who you are now, the one or two projects that matter most, and why this role is the next step. Pick the best project and state the problem, your part, the technology and one measurable result. Keep every claim something you can defend if the next question digs in. You could open with: I am a backend engineer, and the project I am proudest of is the one where I cut checkout latency.

      Screening call chapter →
    • Why this company and why now

      The listener wants to know whether your reason is specific and sincere, not flattery. Name one or two real things about the product, the engineering problems or the team that you have looked at, then connect them to something you have done or want to learn. Why now should be about your growth, not escaping your current job. An opening could be: I have used the product, and the scaling problem it describes is the kind I want to work on.

      Screening call chapter →
    • Notice period, location and compensation expectations

      Give the facts that are true and keep the negotiation for later. State your notice period exactly as your contract says, and mention whether it can be shortened or bought out only if that is real. For compensation, say you would like to understand the role and level first, or give a researched range rather than a single anchor. Never invent a current figure. If you are asked directly, answer honestly and calmly.

      HR and the number chapter →
    • One easy or medium coding question, or a language fundamentals question

      Treat it as a short version of the full coding round. Repeat the problem back, ask about input size and edge cases, state a plan before typing, and talk while you code. For a language question, such as what a closure is or how a hash map handles collisions, give a one line definition and a tiny example. A good line is: first I will do the simple approach so we have something correct, then improve it.

      Tech phone screen chapter →

    Prepare with: Book · Screening callBook · Tech phone screen

    2 sources for this round

  2. Online assessment

    Online assessment90-120 min (one guide)

    One report

    A proctored test mixing multiple-choice questions with two or three coding problems. One guide puts the MCQs on OS and DBMS and the coding at easy-to-medium; guides name HackerEarth, Evaluate or HackerRank as the platform. An undated campus internship report describes a 90-minute test of MCQs plus three coding problems.

    • OS and DBMS basics
    • easy-medium DSA
    • OOP fundamentals

    Varies: One guide says an OA is not consistently reported, so the DSA round may be the first real gate. The only candidate source is undated and for campus interns.

    What can be asked in a online assessment round

    A timed test on a coding platform, taken alone. Usually two or three coding problems, sometimes with multiple-choice questions on CS basics, aptitude or SQL.

    • Array and string problems that need a hash map, two pointers or a sliding window

      Read the constraints first, because they point to the technique. If n is 100,000, an O(n^2) scan will time out, so look for a hash map, two pointers on a sorted array, or a window that moves forward only. Sketch the brute force, find the repeated work, then remove it. For two-sum style pairs you might say: I store each value's index as I scan, so the complement lookup is O(1) and the whole pass is O(n).

      DSA course →
    • Greedy and sorting problems with a catch in the constraints

      Greedy problems hide behind a sort. Ask what ordering makes the locally best choice safe, then try to argue why swapping two adjacent choices never helps. Interval scheduling is the classic case: sort by end time and take every interval that starts after the last chosen one. Check the catch in the constraints, such as overflow, ties or equal values, and test a tiny case by hand before submitting.

      DSA course →
    • A medium dynamic programming or graph-on-a-grid problem

      Decide whether the problem is a graph walk or a recurrence. On a grid, a shortest path with equal step cost is breadth-first search from the start, with a visited set so each cell is processed once, giving O(rows x cols). For dynamic programming, define the state in one sentence, write the transition, set the base cases, then see if only the previous row is needed to save space.

      DSA course →
    • SQL queries with joins and group by

      Start from the table that holds the thing being counted, join the others on their keys, filter rows with WHERE, group, then filter groups with HAVING. Remember that WHERE runs before grouping and HAVING after. Use LEFT JOIN when rows with no match must still appear, and COUNT of a column rather than star when nulls matter. Example: customers with more than three orders is GROUP BY customer_id HAVING COUNT(*) > 3.

      Databases →
    • Multiple-choice questions on OOP, operating systems, databases and networks

      These reward quick, accurate recall rather than long reasoning, so revise the short list of definitions that recur. Know the difference between a process and a thread, the four ACID properties, what an index trades for faster reads, TCP against UDP, and the four pillars of OOP. Eliminate two wrong options first, then choose. Do not spend more than a minute on any single question, and flag it to return to if time remains.

      Mock interviews →

    Prepare with: Book · Online assessmentDSA course

    3 sources for this round

  3. DSA technical interview

    Data structures and algorithmsabout 60 min (one guide)

    One report

    A live round with an engineer. One guide describes a video call on a shared editor with one or two medium problems; guides list arrays, hash maps, two pointers, sliding window, trees, graphs and some DP. One guide advises solving cleanly and explaining well. Harder problems are reported at senior levels by one guide.

    • medium DSA
    • clear explanation of your solution

    Varies: One guide says senior levels get occasional hard problems. The only candidate evidence read is an undated campus internship.

    Practise for this round

    What can be asked in a data structures and algorithms round

    A live coding round of 45 to 60 minutes with one or two problems. You are judged on how you clarify, reason, code, test and state the complexity, not on the answer alone.

    • Arrays, strings and hashing: pairs, windows, frequency counts, prefix sums

      Name the pattern from the shape of the question. Pairs with a target use a hash map of seen values. A contiguous range with a condition uses a sliding window that grows on the right and shrinks on the left, so each element enters and leaves once, giving O(n). Range sums over many queries use a prefix sum array so each query is O(1) after O(n) setup. Count characters with a fixed-size array or map.

      DSA course →
    • Linked lists, stacks and queues, including design-a-structure problems such as an LRU cache

      For an LRU cache, combine a hash map from key to node with a doubly linked list ordered by recency. Get moves the node to the front, put inserts at the front, and when over capacity you remove the tail node and its map entry. Both operations are O(1), and you say why: the map finds the node, the list reorders it without a scan. For stacks, mention a monotonic stack for next greater element.

      DSA course →
    • Trees and BSTs, graphs (BFS, DFS, topological sort, shortest paths) and grids

      Decide the traversal from what is asked. Level by level or shortest path in an unweighted graph is BFS with a queue. Exploring all paths, components or cycles is DFS. A dependency order is topological sort: Kahn's algorithm repeatedly removes nodes with in-degree zero, and leftover nodes mean a cycle. Weighted shortest path with non-negative edges is Dijkstra with a heap, O((V + E) log V). On a BST, an in-order walk is sorted.

      DSA course →
    • Heaps and top-K, intervals, binary search on the answer

      For the K largest items keep a min-heap of size K: push each element and pop the smallest when the heap exceeds K, so the cost is O(n log K) and memory is O(K). For intervals, sort by start, then merge by comparing the next start with the current end. For binary search on the answer, define a yes or no check that is monotonic, such as can ship within D days, and search the capacity range.

      DSA course →
    • Dynamic programming from one dimension up to knapsack and string DP

      Define the state in a sentence, write the recurrence, fix the base cases, and decide the order of filling. Start with the recursive version with memoisation, then convert to a table. For 0/1 knapsack, dp[w] is the best value at capacity w, and in the one dimensional form you loop capacity downward so each item is used once. For string problems such as edit distance, the state is a pair of prefix lengths.

      DSA course →
    • Follow-ups: optimise space, handle streaming input, make it thread-safe

      Treat follow-ups as a chance to show depth, and answer in the same calm order each time. To save space, ask which previous rows or values the recurrence actually reads and keep only those. For streaming input, say what summary you can keep, such as a heap of size K or a running count. For thread safety, name the shared state, guard it with a lock, and keep the critical section short.

    Prepare with: Book · DSA roundDSA course

    3 sources for this round

  4. Machine coding / low-level design

    Machine coding60-120 min

    Prep guides

    Build a working in-memory system from an under-specified prompt, with running code expected rather than pseudocode. Guides say interviewers may add requirements mid-round to test extensibility, and two call it the main filter or bar-setting round. One guide says payments-style care (idempotency, state transitions, concurrency) is worth demonstrating.

    • clean modular design
    • working core flow
    • extensibility
    • edge cases
    • concurrency basics

    Varies: Guides disagree on length (60-90, about 90 and 90-120 min).

    Practise for this round

    What can be asked in a machine coding round

    You build a small working system in your own editor in 60 to 120 minutes, then walk through it. Clean entities, extensibility, a runnable demo and tests matter more than clever algorithms.

    • Parking lot, library or inventory system with several entity types

      Spend the first ten minutes on requirements and entities, not code. For a parking lot you might list Vehicle, Slot, Ticket and Lot, with slot types as an enum and the allocation rule hidden behind an interface so a nearest-slot strategy can be swapped. Keep the code runnable early, write a small demo in main, and add a few tests. Say what you would add with more time, such as pricing rules.

      Whiteboard →
    • Splitwise-style expense sharing, a wallet or a ledger

      The core of expense sharing is a balance ledger: for each pair or each user, store the net amount owed. An expense has a payer, an amount and a split type such as equal, exact or percent, handled by a split strategy per type. Validate that exact splits sum to the total and handle rounding explicitly. To simplify debts, compute each person's net balance and match the largest creditor with the largest debtor.

    • Snake and ladder, tic-tac-toe, chess or another game engine

      Model the board, players, dice or moves, and a game controller that owns the turn loop, with rules kept out of the board class. For tic-tac-toe, keep counters per row, column and both diagonals, so a win check is O(1) per move instead of scanning the grid. For snake and ladder, store jumps in a map from square to destination. Make board size and number of players configurable rather than hard coded.

    • An in-memory cache, key-value store, rate limiter or job scheduler

      Start with the public interface and the invariants. For a rate limiter, a token bucket stores tokens and a last refill time per key, refills lazily on each call and allows the request if a token remains. For an LRU or key-value store, say the data structure and the complexity. For a scheduler, a priority queue ordered by run time with a worker that waits for the earliest job.

    • Elevator, vending machine or ATM as a state machine

      Draw the states and transitions before coding. An elevator is idle, moving up, moving down or doors open, and each event such as a button press or arrival is handled by the current state. A vending machine moves through idle, has money, dispensing and out of stock. Implement it with a state interface or an enum and a transition table, so invalid actions are rejected in one place instead of with scattered if statements.

    • Follow-ups: add a new rule without rewriting, make it concurrent, add persistence

      Show that your design bends without a rewrite. For a new rule, say you add a new class that implements the existing interface and register it, leaving old code unchanged. For concurrency, name the shared state and protect it with a lock per resource, or atomic operations, keeping check-and-update in one critical section. For persistence, put a repository interface in front of storage so an in-memory version can be replaced by a database.

      Mock interviews →
    3 sources for this round

  5. High-level design

    System designabout 60 min

    Prep guides

    An architecture discussion on a whiteboard tool (one guide names Miro or Excalidraw). Guides say it focuses on scalability, fault tolerance and trade-offs, and two add a payments angle with idempotency, consistency and slow or failing dependencies.

    • scalability
    • fault tolerance
    • idempotency and retries
    • trade-off reasoning

    Varies: Two guides place it at SDE-2 and above; one adds that SDE-1 may have it merged into the manager round.

    Practise for this round

    What can be asked in a system design round

    A 45 to 60 minute discussion of how to build a system at scale: requirements, numbers, APIs, data model, components, bottlenecks and trade-offs.

    • Short links, chat, news feed, notifications, search, rate limiting

      Use one repeatable path: clarify scope and scale, estimate load, define the API, sketch the data model, draw the main components, then probe bottlenecks. For short links, store a mapping from a generated short id to the long url, generate ids with a counter encoded in base 62, cache hot links, and note reads far outnumber writes. For chat, mention persistent connections and a store ordered per conversation.

      System design course →
    • Payments, wallets and ledgers where money must never be lost or doubled

      Money systems put correctness before speed. Use a double-entry ledger where entries are append-only and every transfer writes a debit and an equal credit in one transaction. Protect against doubled charges with an idempotency key stored with the result, so a retry returns the original outcome. For lost updates use a database transaction, and reconcile with the payment provider's records on a schedule.

      System design course →
    • Ride matching, maps and anything with live location

      Split the problem into location ingestion, a geospatial index and matching. Drivers send updates every few seconds to a write-optimised store, often in memory, keyed by a grid cell such as a geohash or S2 cell. To find nearby drivers, query the rider's cell and its neighbours, then rank by distance and estimated time. Say how you handle a stale location and a driver who accepts two rides.

      System design course →
    • File storage and sync, video streaming and content delivery

      For file sync, split files into chunks, hash each chunk and upload only chunks the server lacks, so a small edit transfers a small amount. Keep metadata in a database and chunks in object storage. For video, upload the original, transcode into several resolutions, store segments and serve them through a content delivery network with adaptive bitrate streaming, so the player switches quality as bandwidth changes.

      System design course →
    • Fundamentals: caching, sharding, replication, queues, consistency, failure handling

      Treat each as a tool with a cost. A cache cuts read latency but adds staleness and invalidation. Sharding spreads write load but makes cross-shard queries hard. Replication gives availability and read scale but introduces lag. Queues smooth spikes and decouple services but require idempotent consumers. For failures, name timeouts, retries with backoff and a fallback. State what you give up whenever you choose.

      System design course →
    • Back-of-envelope estimates and what they decide

      Estimates are there to choose a design, so finish each one with a decision. Use round numbers: a day has about 100,000 seconds, so 10 million requests a day is roughly 100 per second on average, with a peak of a few times that. Multiply object size by count for storage, and compare against one machine's capacity. If one database handles the load, say so and avoid sharding.

      Capacity estimation →

    Prepare with: Book · System designSystem design course

    3 sources for this round

  6. Hiring manager

    Hiring manager45-60 min

    Prep guides

    Guides describe a deep dive into past projects, technology decisions, and how you handle conflict, failure and disagreement, with some attention to product intuition and what you owned.

    • project depth
    • ownership
    • handling failure
    • product intuition

    Varies: For senior roles a bar-raiser style round may replace or add to this one, with more leadership focus (one guide).

    Practise for this round

    What can be asked in a hiring manager round

    A conversation about your past work and how you would fit the team: depth on projects, ownership, decisions and trade-offs, sometimes a design problem.

    • Pick a project and go deep: why this design, what broke, what you would change

      Choose a project you can discuss at every layer. Explain the problem and who it served, the options you considered, why you chose one, what broke and what you would change now. Be clear which parts you did and which the team did. Admitting a flaw earns trust. Opening line: the main constraint was latency, so I chose a cache in front of the database, and I would now add an invalidation strategy.

      Resume grilling chapter →
    • A time you disagreed with a teammate or pushed back on a decision

      Use situation, task, action, result, and keep the disagreement about the work, never the person. The listener is checking that you can hold a view with evidence, listen, and commit once the decision is made. Describe what you proposed, the data or reasoning you used, how you reached agreement or accepted the other path, and what happened. Do not invent a story: use a real one, even a small one.

      Behavioural chapter →
    • How you prioritise when everything is urgent

      Show a method rather than a claim of being busy. Describe how you judge impact and deadline, ask who needs the result and when, and say no or renegotiate scope early when two things clash. Mention communicating the trade-off to stakeholders so nobody is surprised. A sentence you could adapt: I list what is blocking others first, then what has a fixed date, then what moves a metric.

      Behavioural chapter →
    • What you want from the next role and the team

      Answer honestly and tie it to what the role offers. Say what you want to learn or own next, such as larger systems, more ownership of design, or mentoring, and what kind of team helps you do it. Then ask what the team is trying to achieve this year and how the work is reviewed. The listener checks that your wishes match the job and that you have thought about it.

    Prepare with: Book · Resume grillingBook · Behavioural

    3 sources for this round

  7. HR and offer

    HR and offer15-30 min

    Prep guides

    A short call on compensation and culture or logistics. One guide says successful candidates often hear a verbal offer within a few days.

    • compensation expectations
    • culture fit
    • joining logistics

    Practise for this round

    What can be asked in a hr and offer round

    The closing conversation: motivation, expectations, notice period, compensation and how the offer is structured. Prepared answers and a clear number help here.

    • Current and expected compensation, and how to answer without boxing yourself in

      Be honest and avoid giving a single number too early. Share your current pay only if you are comfortable, and make clear what is fixed and what is variable. For expectations, say you are flexible for the right role, and offer a researched range based on level and market. If pushed, state a figure you can justify. Never state a number you cannot support, because offers are often checked.

      HR and the number chapter →
    • Notice period, joining date and relocation

      Give the facts exactly as they are in your contract. State the notice period, whether early release or a buy-out is truly possible, and the earliest honest joining date. Do not promise a date your employer has not agreed to. For relocation, say whether you can move, how soon, and whether you would need support. Clear, early information helps the recruiter plan and shows you are reliable.

      HR and the number chapter →
    • Why you are leaving and what you are looking for

      Keep it positive and forward looking. Talk about what you want more of, such as larger scale, ownership or a stronger team, rather than criticising your current employer. The listener checks that you will not leave this job for the same reason. Opening line: I have learned a lot in the current role, and I now want to work on problems at a bigger scale.

    • Levels, equity and how the offer is built

      Ask for the structure rather than only the total. Find out the level and title, base salary, bonus and whether it is guaranteed, equity amount, vesting schedule and cliff, joining bonus and any clawback. Compare offers on a yearly total with the same assumptions. If equity is in a private company, ask how it is valued and what happens on leaving. Asking calmly is normal and expected.

      Levels and equity chapter →

    Prepare with: Book · HR & the numberBook · Levels & equity

    2 sources for this round

Preparing for the people rounds at Razorpay

The hiring manager, behavioural and offer conversations. Candidate reports shape the themes; the answers and frames are written for this site, so use them as a structure and bring your own stories.

What Razorpay says it valuesOfficial ↗

  • Build ExtraordinaryBuild things at speed, including agents, and be willing to rework existing systems rather than defend them.
  • Grow ExtraordinaryExpect little hierarchy and reward that follows output, so show what you personally moved.
  • Live ExtraordinaryWork in a high-trust setting where curiosity is the baseline, so say what you do not yet know.
  • Role FitThe rounds on skills, expertise and how you think about real problems in the role you applied for.
  • SynergyThe rounds on how you communicate, collaborate, own outcomes and work with other people.
  • AI EdgeThe rounds on how you bring AI into your workflow, solve problems and execute day to day.

Themes candidates report being probed

  • Project depth and where past work broke
  • Technology and trade-off decisions
  • Disagreement with a peer
  • Ownership and production issues
  • Decision making and time management
  • Motivation and why Razorpay
  • Compensation expectations and culture at the final call

Questions to rehearse

  1. A teammate proposes a solution you think is wrong. Walk me through what you do, and what you do when you are the one proposing.One report

    What is being checked. A frontend candidate reports this pairing in the hiring manager round. The listener is checking the Synergy side of the loop: whether you argue with evidence, stay open to being wrong and still commit once the team decides.

    How to frame it. Pick a real disagreement where there was a measurable difference between the two options, then show both directions: how you tested their idea fairly and how you made your own easy to challenge. Example opening: 'We split on whether to queue the retries or keep them inline, so I proposed a small load test that would settle it.' Close with what the team did and what you would repeat.

    Worked example in the Interview book →Candidate write-up · 2021 ↗

  2. What motivates you most, and tell me about a feature you shipped that you are not proud of.One report

    What is being checked. Reported as a pair in a frontend loop. The motivation half checks for fit with a fast, high-trust environment; the feature half checks whether you can name a real weakness in your own work without blaming others.

    How to frame it. Give the motivation in one sentence tied to the work itself, then spend most of the time on the feature: what was cut or rushed, what the user or system paid for it, and what you changed afterwards. Example opening: 'I am most motivated when I can see a number move because of something I built, and the worst example of the opposite was a settings screen I shipped without ever measuring.'

    Worked example in the Interview book →Candidate write-up · 2021 ↗

  3. How do you resolve conflict in a team, how do you reach decisions, and how do you manage your time?One report

    What is being checked. The same frontend candidate says the hiring manager round assessed conflict resolution and decision making, and mentions a preferred way of managing time. The listener wants a repeatable method for each, not three slogans, and evidence that the methods survive pressure.

    How to frame it. Answer in three short parts, each with a method and a one-line proof from your own work that you pick beforehand. For decisions, name how you separate reversible from irreversible choices. Example opening: 'For conflict I try to move the argument from opinions to a shared test, and the clearest case of that for me was...'

    Candidate write-up · 2021 ↗

  4. Take me through a project you owned: how you handled production problems and who you worked with along the way.One report

    What is being checked. A frontend SDE-2 candidate describes a conversational deep dive on ownership, production issues and collaboration. The listener is checking that the work is genuinely yours and that you stayed accountable after launch.

    How to frame it. Structure it as scope, your decisions, the incident or near miss, and what changed in the process afterwards. Be exact about which parts were yours and which were shared. Example opening: 'I owned the checkout flow for about a year, and the incident that shaped how I work on it was a bad release that we caught through error rates rather than support tickets.'

    Worked example in the Interview book →Candidate write-up · 2025 ↗

  5. Why Razorpay, and how would you handle a disagreement with another team that you depend on?Prep guides

    What is being checked. Guides describe a why-here question paired with situational prompts on conflict and cross-team work. The listener checks whether your interest in payments is specific and whether you can work across boundaries.

    How to frame it. Anchor the why in something concrete about the product or the problems of payments reliability, not a general praise of the brand. For the situation, describe how you would find the other team's constraint first. Example opening: 'What draws me is that a small failure here is someone's missed payment, which changes how I think about retries and idempotency.'

    Worked example in the Interview book →Prep guide ↗

  6. Describe a decision you made with incomplete information, and a time you disagreed with a technical peer. Use numbers.Prep guides

    What is being checked. A prep guide describes the behavioural round as wanting specifics. The listener is checking that you can quantify the stakes, name what you did not know and show how the decision looked afterwards.

    How to frame it. Choose a decision where you can state two or three real figures such as traffic, latency or error rate, before and after. Say what you did not know and how you limited the downside. Example opening: 'We had a week and no load data, so I picked the option that was cheapest to reverse and set an alert that would tell us within a day if it was wrong.'

    Prep guide ↗

  7. How have you brought AI tools into your own engineering work, and where did they let you down?Prep guides

    What is being checked. The official hiring page names AI Edge as a round family. The listener wants to see practical use, judgement about where it fails and responsibility for the final result.

    How to frame it. Describe one workflow in which you used AI, how you checked its output and one case where you rejected it. Keep it about outcomes rather than tools. Example opening: 'I use it to draft test cases for edge conditions, and I always run them against the real code before trusting either, because it once produced tests that passed for the wrong reason.'

    Official ↗

The offer conversation

  • A prep guide describes a short final call of 15 to 30 minutes on compensation expectations and company culture, and says a verbal offer often follows within a few days, with the whole process taking 2 to 4 weeks.
  • As general advice, ask for the full breakdown in writing (fixed pay, variable, joining bonus, equity and its vesting) before comparing it with anything else.
  • Ask which level and band the role sits in and how it was decided. Know your notice period and whether a buy-out is possible before the call, and give a total compensation range only when pressed.

What we could not verify. The jobs page presents three culture pillars and three hiring round families rather than a classic values list, so Role Fit, Synergy and AI Edge are round families, not values. The dev.to account is from 2021, and the Taro one is a short frontend snippet with no question detail. No first-hand report of the compensation call or of notice-period handling was found.

What we could not verify. No readable candidate report for an SDE role at Razorpay: LeetCode, Glassdoor, Medium (member-only) and Naukri Code360 returned 403 or thin pages, and the one GeeksforGeeks page is an undated campus internship. Guides give different round counts and durations. No official Razorpay engineering interview page found.