SAP Labs Interview Experience @ UVCE | Gautham Sutrave (Batch '26)

SAP Labs recently visited the UVCE campus for recruitment, conducting a rigorous process consisting of five elimination rounds. Below is a detailed, first-hand account of the experience shared by Gautham Sutrave.

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The Recruitment Process Overview

The SAP Labs recruitment drive was divided into five distinct stages:

1. Online Assessment
2. Technical Interview 1
3. Technical Interview 2
4. Techno-Managerial Round
5. HR Round

1. Online Assessment

It was conducted online. There were two DSA (Data Structures and Algorithms) questions to solve in this round: one was easy, and another was a medium-level question.

We were given a time limit of 1 hour 30 minutes to solve the problems, where we had to consider all edge cases before submitting.

Note: All the rounds from here on were conducted in the college campus, and every round was an elimination round. The final results were announced on the same day.

2. Technical Interview 1

The interviewer started off with a small introduction and asked me to introduce myself.

I was asked about the certifications mentioned in my resume. Following that, I was questioned on the projects listed in my resume. Since it was a team-specific hiring process where the interviewer was hiring candidates according to their team requirements (Cloud Native Developer), they delved deep into the project where I had mentioned using Cloud Native services.

The questions about cloud started from basics and extended up to intermediate level. I was also asked about the implementation of the cloud-native service in my project and the major issues I faced in doing so.

Coding Challenge: OOPs & DSA

Next, I was asked to develop an OOPs (Object-Oriented Programming) program from scratch for a Vehicle Parking System. Initially, I struggled with the approach, but moving on, we had a discussion of sorts about the solution.

As time was running up, I was asked one last question about DSA: Given an array of 0s and 1s in random order, move all the 0s to the beginning. I gave the brute force approach and a better approach. While I tried to optimize it, I could not do it completely.

The interview went on for about 1 hour.

3. Technical Interview 2

Here, I was questioned about the Vehicle Parking System again, but this time it was in much more depth. He wanted me to design a database and write a program about the problem using the database created with the help of OOPs concepts.

He wanted me to make assumptions, note them down on paper, and explain my steps on how I would approach the problem and solve it. At each step, I was questioned and cross-questioned about my approach. I was imposed with a lot of challenges throughout and asked to update my solution accordingly; it helped me to understand the problem statement more clearly.

Though I could not solve it completely, I was trying to do the best I could. The interviewer was guiding me through the problem, giving inputs on how to approach such real-life problem statements.

Project Deep Dive: Machine Learning

Moving on, he asked about my projects in complete detail. He picked the ML (Machine Learning) project and asked me to explain:

• The inputs taken to train the model.
• What the model actually does.
• The complete working of the model along with the algorithms used.

This round lasted for about 1 hour and was mainly focused on solving a real-world problem from scratch, considering all assumptions and creating a relational database with working code.

4. Techno-Managerial Round

The interview started off with a brief introduction followed by another problem statement:

"There are three colleges—say 1, 2, and 3. Each college provides me the data of employees which have 10 consistent attributes, but each college gives the data in different formats (XML, CSV, and JSON). Design a system to receive this data consistently and store it in a database of your choice, irrespective of the format."

At each step of my approach, I was questioned, and they added new constraints—such as, "What if there is another college with a different format, say plain text? How would you make changes in your system then?"

Situational Questions

They asked me situational questions such as:

• If I was given the role of a tester, would I do it?
• There might not be any work related to AI or ML (which I was interested in)—would I still give my best in such a role?
• Would I be open to work on weekends?

Advice: Sometimes it is okay to say NO if you are not comfortable with any of the questions they have asked, but for each answer, have a proper explanation as to why yes or why no.

This round lasted for about half an hour.

5. HR Round

The interview started with a brief introduction about myself followed by standard HR questions such as:

• Why did I choose AIML?
• What if we give you some other role which does not involve anything related to AIML?
• What are the challenges I faced during my hackathons/coding competitions? How did I overcome them?
• What challenges did I face during my college life, and what did I learn from them?
• Why do you want to join SAP?

This round lasted for around 15-20 minutes.