Blinkit SDE-1 Interview Experience

Aayushi Singh

3 min read

·

Sep 30, 2026

--

1

Listen

Share

Role: SDE-1
Application: Referral
Result: Selected 🎉

I recently interviewed for an SDE-1 role at Blinkit, and I wanted to share my interview experience for anyone preparing for similar roles.

The process consisted of three rounds:

1. Problem Solving
2. Machine Coding / Design + SQL + Projects
3. Culture Fit

Here’s how each round went.

Round 1 — Problem Solving

Duration: ~1 hour

The interview started with a brief introduction, followed by two coding problems.

Problem 1 — Task Scheduler

The first problem was a Task Scheduler problem.

This was an end-to-end coding round, so the interviewer was interested not just in the final approach but also in:

• How I understood the problem
• How I approached the solution
• Data structures used
• Edge cases
• Time and space complexity
• Code quality
• Dry Run and execute code for checking the output

I discussed the approach first and then implemented the solution.

Problem 2 — Dynamic Rolling Dice

The second problem was a variation of a dynamic rolling dice problem.

The key requirement was that every operation should run in O(1):

• Addition
• Removal
• Get

The interesting part of this problem was figuring out the appropriate data structure combination to achieve constant-time operations so we had discussions on different data structures.

Overall, this round was less about simply knowing a particular algorithm and more about thinking through the problem and making the right data-structure choices.

Round 2 — Design + SQL + Projects

This was probably the most interesting round for me because it covered multiple areas.

C++ Standard Library Design

I was asked to design a Queue as a C++ standard-library-like implementation, while trying to make it as optimized as possible and covering the basic implementations.

I started with an array-based implementation and then discussed how it could be optimized/implemented using a linked list.

The discussion then went beyond simply implementing a queue.

We talked about:

• Memory constraints
• Memory allocation
• Lock mechanisms
• Thread safety
• Trade-offs between different implementations
• What happens when the queue grows
• How the underlying implementation affects performance

The interviewer kept asking “what if?” questions, which made the discussion more interesting.

This round taught me that in a design-oriented interview, it’s important to understand not only how to implement something but also why a particular implementation makes sense under different constraints.

SQL

After the design discussion, I was given a database schema and asked to write SQL queries.

The focus was on writing the queries in an optimized way.

The interviewer went deeper into the projects I had worked on and asked about:

• My contribution
• Technical decisions
• Challenges I faced
• Why I chose certain approaches
• Overall system design

Round 3 — Culture Fit

This was the final round. The discussion was much more conversational compared to the first two rounds.

I was asked : Why interested to join blinkit ?

I was also asked to name a feature I liked about Blinkit and one that I didn’t like. and a lot of behavourial questions like what can I bring to the table . What is something which distinguishes me from others. etc.

The round ended with an offer discussion.

And that’s how the interview process ended.

Final Result — Selected 🎉

I received the offer and was selected for the SDE-1 role at Blinkit.

Preperation : I solved the striver sheet and studied system design through hello interview. Prepared the behavourial questions through leetcode discussion.