My Concentric AI Interview Experience

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I recently interviewed with Concentric AI, and since a few people have asked me about the process, I thought I’d write down my experience.

In my case, there was no online assessment, so I’ll directly start with the personal interview rounds.

PI 1 — DSA Round

The interview started with an introduction.

I was then asked a few follow-up questions about my open-source contributions. They mainly wanted to understand how well I knew the organisation I had contributed to, the product, and how much ownership I had over my contribution.

After that, I was asked a DSA problem: Grouping Anagrams.

I was not asked to write full code and instead explained the solution using pseudocode. Some of my friends were asked to code though, so I think this depends on the interviewer.

I started with the least optimal approach and gradually optimised it. Throughout the discussion, I made sure to communicate with the interviewer and explain what I was thinking.

They also asked about the time and space complexity of the approaches.

Some of my batchmates got different questions. For example, one of them was asked for a high-level explanation of a binary tree.

After DSA, I was asked about:

  • OOP concepts
  • ACID properties of databases

I personally did not get many follow-up questions on these.

I also wasn’t asked much about Computer Networks or Operating Systems, although some of my friends were.

One DBMS topic that seemed to come up repeatedly for others was indexing.

PI 2 — LLD Round

The second round was more focused on Low-Level Design.

The interview started with:

Why do you love software engineering?

I used this question to talk about the things I enjoy doing, such as competitive programming, open source, mentorship, and hackathons.

After that, I was asked to design a Tic-Tac-Toe game.

Some of my friends were asked other LLD problems like:

  • Parking Lot
  • Splitwise

For the design, I followed the general method I had seen in HelloInterview’s YouTube videos.

After the initial design, the interviewer asked me to optimise it as much as possible.

While making changes, I tried to explain the trade-offs behind my decisions.

For example, if one approach saved time but used additional space, I mentioned that. Similarly, if we wanted to save space, I explained how that could increase the time required.

The interviewer seemed satisfied with the design.

After that, I was asked about balanced binary trees, mainly:

  • AVL Trees
  • Red-Black Trees

They didn’t go very deep into them. A general understanding was enough in my case.

Since there was still some time left, I was asked another DSA question:

Validate Binary Search Tree

And that concluded my interview experience.

Programming Language

From what I know, they seem to prefer Java.

In my case, I was asked to write pseudocode, but I remember some people being asked to write actual Java code.

So this probably depends on the interviewer.

Final Thoughts

Overall, my experience mainly involved:

  • DSA
  • OOP
  • DBMS fundamentals
  • Low-Level Design
  • Trees
  • Questions around my projects/open-source work

One thing I tried to do throughout both interviews was communicate what I was thinking instead of silently jumping to the final answer.

Especially during DSA and LLD, I explained the optimisations and trade-offs I was making.

That was pretty much my Concentric AI interview experience and the verdict was that i got selected for and Internship.

Hope this helps anyone preparing for their interviews.

All the best!