I applied through college or university. I interviewed at EPAM Systems (Bengaluru) in Feb 2026
Interview
The recruitment process was conducted as a pool campus drive with participation from multiple colleges. The first round was an online assessment, which I cleared successfully. The second round was an in-person pen-and-paper coding test that began around 10:30 AM, and results were announced around 2:00 PM. Approximately 400 students appeared for this round, and around 30 candidates were shortlisted.
The pen-and-paper round focused more on object-oriented programming concepts rather than traditional DSA. Candidates were asked to design a system using abstraction and inheritance principles. After the written round, the shortlisted candidates proceeded to an in-person technical interview. The overall process was structured and competitive, with a strong emphasis on core OOP fundamentals and logical thinking rather than pure algorithmic problems.
I appeared for the interview in February 2026 in Bangalore. Based on what seniors had shared, earlier batches were typically asked more DSA-focused questions. However, in my case, the focus shifted more toward object-oriented design and abstraction concepts rather than traditional algorithm-based problems.
The overall emphasis was on OOP fundamentals, class hierarchy design, and clarity of implementation.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
In the pen-and-paper round, all candidates were given the same problem statement. I am not entirely certain if this was the exact wording, but the core requirement was to design a system using abstraction and inheritance principles.
Specifically, I had to create an abstract class named Hospital, define abstract methods such as getDescription(), and declare the required variables. Then, I needed to create a Person class with a string variable name, extend it into a Patient class, and override the getDescription() method. Additionally, I was asked to implement simple logic such as retrieving the next patient based on priority.
The focus of the question was mainly on understanding abstraction, method overriding, class hierarchy, and applying basic low-level design concepts rather than solving a pure data structures problem.
The interviewer did not follow the list of topics that was sent to me for preparation. The questions felt random and not connected to each other. When I needed a short moment to think and choose the right words, there was no support or guidance.
I was also accused of using prompts, but no proof was given. I strongly disagree with this claim.
For the technical task, I was given only 15 minutes, even though 30 minutes had been mentioned before. When time was almost over, I explained that I was very close to finishing and clearly described my solution and thinking process. The interviewer asked one more question about my solution, and I answered it correctly. So saying that I did not complete the task is not accurate.
In my opinion, the interviewer did not seem interested and did not answer my questions clearly.
Overall, my experience was negative from the beginning.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
about experience with AWS - difference between Dynamo db and postgresql
Live coding was related to the basic data structures, Beside of coding, there were some core Java questions, and database questions. Also there are few multithreading questions. Interviewer was very friendly and supportive during the process.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
There is a question related to exception handling.