Citadel Software Engineer interview experience

I remember getting problems that looked straightforward at first, but the real requirement was pushing the complexity down—turning something like an n-squared approach into something closer to n log n. The coding work was timed, and the optimization step was what decided whether I could actually finish strong.

I also had a monotone stack problem where after my initial attempt, I had to improve time complexity. That became the main challenge, because the interview expected me to complete not just one attempt but effectively refine the solution under a tight forty-five minute