A Software Engineer at Times Internet plays a pivotal role in driving India's largest digital products ecosystem. Times Internet operates a massive portfolio of digital-first brands across news, finance, sports, and entertainment—including platforms like Times of India, Economic Times, and ET Money. As an engineer here, you are responsible for building, optimizing, and scaling applications that serve millions of active users daily, making high availability, low latency, and robust system architecture your primary focus areas.

In this role, you will work on complex, high-throughput systems where even minor optimizations can significantly improve the user experience for millions of readers and consumers. Whether you are working on the frontend to deliver highly interactive, responsive user interfaces or designing fault-tolerant microservices on the backend, your work directly impacts how digital media and financial services are consumed across the country.

To succeed, you must possess a strong foundation in computer science fundamentals, a passion for solving real-world engineering challenges at scale, and the adaptability to work across diverse product verticals. The engineering team at Times Internet values practical problem-solving, clean code, and a deep understanding of core technologies over mere theoretical knowledge.

The following questions are representative of the patterns and topics you will encounter during the Times Internet hiring process. These questions are drawn from real candidate experiences across various product teams and are designed to evaluate both your conceptual understanding and your practical coding abilities.

Data Structures & Algorithms

These questions assess your algorithmic thinking, optimization techniques, and ability to write clean, bug-free code under time constraints.

• Implement an algorithm to create an array $B$ from a given array $A$ such that $B[i]$ is equal to the product of all elements of $A$ except $A[i]$, without using the division operator.
• Write a function to generate the mirror image of a binary tree.

To excel in the Times Internet recruitment process, you must prepare to demonstrate a blend of solid computer science fundamentals, domain-specific expertise, and structured logical thinking. Interviewers are looking for candidates who can write production-ready code, explain their design decisions logically, and handle ambiguous problem scenarios with ease.

Algorithmic Problem-Solving – You must be highly proficient in core data structures (arrays, linked lists, trees, and graphs) and algorithms. Focus on writing clean, readable code and optimizing for both time and space complexity. Be prepared to dry-run your solutions with edge cases.

Technical Domain Mastery – Whether your focus is backend (Java, Spring, Node.js), frontend (React.js, JavaScript), or mobile (Android, iOS), you must understand the underlying mechanics of your stack. Interviewers will push past surface-level definitions to test your practical, hands-on experience.

System Design & Architecture – For mid-to-senior roles, you will be evaluated on your ability to design scalable, reliable, and maintainable systems. Be ready to discuss API design, database schemas, caching layers, and microservices architecture.

Logical Reasoning & Puzzles – Times Internet frequently uses analytical puzzles to test how you approach unfamiliar problems. The goal is not just to get the correct answer, but to walk the interviewer through your structured thought process.

The interview process for a Software Engineer at Times Internet is rigorous and multi-staged, designed to thoroughly evaluate your technical competence, practical coding skills, and cultural fit. Depending on the team, location, and seniority of the role, the process typically consists of three to five rounds.

The journey begins with an initial screening, which is often a telephonic discussion with a recruiter or a hiring manager. This is followed by an online coding assessment or a written test that covers aptitude, logical reasoning, and basic coding challenges. Once you clear the initial screening, you will progress to multiple technical interviews. These rounds focus heavily on live coding, system design, and deep dives into your technical stack. Finally, you will participate in a techno-managerial or behavioral round, followed by an HR discussion.

The timeline above outlines the typical progression of a candidate through the hiring pipeline. Use this visual guide to pace your preparation, ensuring you allocate sufficient time to practice live coding before your technical rounds and system design concepts before the managerial discussions.

Data Structures, Algorithms & Puzzles

This evaluation area is designed to assess your core analytical capabilities and your approach to translating abstract logic into clean, functional code. At Times Internet, interviewers look for candidates who don't just memorize solutions but can adapt their knowledge to solve unique problems.

Be ready to go over:

• Array and String Manipulation – Standard techniques such as two-pointer approaches, sliding windows, and prefix sums.
• Tree and Graph Traversals – Deep understanding of binary trees, binary search trees, DFS, BFS, and recursion.
• Analytical Puzzles – Classic logical riddles that test your lateral thinking and mathematical reasoning.
• Advanced concepts – Heap operations, dynamic programming basics, and space-time complexity trade-offs for high-volume data processing.

Example scenarios:

• Proposing and implementing an $O(N)$ solution to a complex array manipulation problem without utilizing division or auxiliary space.
• Walking through a step-by-step recursive approach to mirror or balance a binary tree, explaining the call stack behavior.
• Solving a logical river-crossing puzzle on the whiteboard, explaining your constraints and assumptions clearly to the interviewer.

Backend Architecture & Concurrency

For backend engineering roles, the panel will scrutinize your understanding of system stability, multi-threaded execution, and framework internals. They want to ensure you can write code that runs efficiently under heavy concurrent user loads.

Be ready to go over:

• Multithreading & Synchronization – Thread lifecycles, execution pools, synchronization blocks, and avoiding deadlocks in Java or Node.js.
• Framework Internals – Deep understanding of dependency injection, MVC lifecycles, and database transaction management (specifically within Spring/Spring Boot).
• Microservices & API Design – RESTful API principles, service discovery, caching patterns, and database indexing.
• Advanced concepts – Distributed system patterns, message queues (Kafka/RabbitMQ), and search engine indexing using SOLR or Elasticsearch.

Example scenarios:

• Explaining how a custom thread pool executes tasks and how to safely handle shared mutable state using concurrent collections.
• Designing a database schema and indexing strategy for a high-traffic news platform to minimize query latency.
• Walking through the end-to-end flow of a request in a microservices architecture, highlighting where caching should be applied.

Frontend & UI Engineering

If you are interviewing for a frontend-focused position, the team will evaluate your mastery of modern JavaScript, library internals, and rendering optimization.

Be ready to go over:

• Modern JavaScript (ES6+) – Closures, prototypes, asynchronous programming, promises, and event loops.
• React.js & State Management – Component lifecycles, hooks, virtual DOM reconciliation, and state flow using Redux or Context API.
• Web Performance – Code splitting, lazy loading, asset optimization, and minimizing critical rendering path blockages.
• Advanced concepts – Hybrid rendering strategies (SSR/SSG), progressive web apps (PWAs), and build tools configuration.

Example scenarios:

• Refactoring a legacy jQuery-based component into a modern, performance-optimized React component.
• Explaining how to implement code splitting across routes in a React application to reduce the initial bundle size.
• Debugging a memory leak caused by improper cleanup of event listeners inside a React hook or component.