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Algorithm Design and Analysis Questions

Covers algorithmic problem solving and analysis fundamentals required in technical interviews. Topics include common data structures, sorting and searching, recursion and divide and conquer, dynamic programming, greedy strategies, backtracking, graph algorithms such as breadth first search and depth first search, shortest path and topological sort, string algorithms, and techniques for deriving correct and efficient solutions. Candidates should demonstrate ability to reason about correctness, derive time and space complexity bounds using Big O notation, and discuss scalability and optimization trade offs for large inputs.

MediumTechnical
86 practiced
Design and implement a per-user rate limiter in Python using the token-bucket algorithm. API: allow_request(user_id: str, timestamp: float) -> bool. Target: support 10,000 users, bursts up to 100 tokens, sustained rate 10 tokens/sec per user. Consider memory efficiency and concurrency when multiple processes may check tokens concurrently. Describe your chosen storage and synchronization strategy.
EasyTechnical
73 practiced
Compare quicksort and mergesort: give algorithm overviews, average and worst-case time complexities, space complexity, stability, and cache behavior. For SRE tasks such as sorting log entries or large datasets, when would you choose one over the other and why? Mention external sorting considerations.
HardTechnical
88 practiced
Given a large directed dependency graph that changes incrementally (edges added/removed), design an algorithm and data structures to efficiently detect cycles after each update rather than recomputing from scratch. Discuss correctness, amortized complexity, and practical heuristics for high update rates in an SRE environment.
HardSystem Design
105 practiced
You receive logs from thousands of machines and must deduplicate identical log messages across the fleet to reduce storage. Design an algorithm that minimizes network transfer and memory while ensuring a low false-positive rate; consider using sketches, rolling hashes, multi-stage dedup, and per-cluster aggregation. Describe trade-offs between approximate and exact deduplication.
MediumTechnical
74 practiced
You are given N microservices and a list of dependency edges (A depends on B). Design an algorithm to compute a safe deployment order (topological sort). Provide pseudocode or code and describe how you would detect cycles and present them to engineers. Also discuss handling optional or soft dependencies which shouldn't block deployment but should be considered.

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