I applied through university. The process took 1 week. I interviewed at PayPal (Singapore)
Interview
2 rounds of interview on the same day. 1 hour technical round, 30 mins managerial round. Overall mostly asking algorithm questions, data structure specific question and even during the managerial round was asked questions about database optimisation. The managerial round was more of a friendly conversation to get to know the candidate and overall just discussed projects I've worked on and past experiences. Surprisingly no questions of strengths / weaknesses were asked.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
What is the difference between hash map and hash set?
Do you know what the random function in Java.Math does?
Given a list of countries with a population number, how to randomly generate a country from this list? How to ensure that the higher the population number the higher the chances of being selected? (whiteboard algorithm question)
I applied through a recruiter. I interviewed at PayPal
Interview
A call with manager followed by 2 45 min interviews. One was a typical leetcode question and the other was a system design question. The system design for me was pretty difficult since I am not used to it but the leetcode interview was easy, The system design interview varies for some. Some people got a simple OOP system design question but I got a real system design question where I had to design a feature.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
If you had to scale your personal project, how would you do it?
I applied online. I interviewed at PayPal (San Jose, CA) in Apr 2026
Interview
OA -> 15min recruiter screen -> 2x 45 min tech rounds (one LC/algorithmic/DSA, one system design/behavioral engineering manager). Super chill, didn't expect to hear back in less than a week. First tech was on Hackerrank with an engineer, try to get 15/15 test cases passed and communicate your thought process. Second tech was a resume grill (really know those bullet points) and a simple verbal system design.