Mars · Primly Community

Mars coding interview / online assessment, format and difficulty: just finished mine

corp_refugee · 5 replies

Did the Mars online assessment this week for a software engineer role on their digital team. Posting fresh because I searched forever and found almost nothing recent.

Platform: HackerRank. Two hours, two problems.

Problem 1 String/array manipulation. Not a classic LeetCode problem I recognized but the pattern was similar to medium-difficulty prefix sum or frequency map questions. Honestly probably LeetCode medium if I had to classify it. Completed in about 30 minutes.

Problem 2 This one was more domain-flavored. Something about inventory or order processing (they make it feel relevant to their business). Algorithmically it was two nested loops with a potential optimization to bring it down to O(n log n). I got a correct solution but not the optimal one within time and it still passed all test cases because their test data wasn't large enough to expose the quadratic complexity.

Time pressure Two hours for two problems felt reasonable. I wasn't scrambling at the end. But I know people who said they ran out of time, so maybe practice under a clock if you're the type to over-explain your code comments.

What I wasn't expecting No SQL section. No system design. No behavioral. Just coding. I expected maybe some multiple choice but nope. Pure algorithm problems.

After the OA Got an email five business days later that I was moving to the phone screen. They didn't give feedback on my OA score, which is normal.

Overall: harder than what I expected from a CPG company but easier than anything I've done for Big Tech. If you've been grinding Leetcode mediums you should be fine. Hards not required.

5 replies

jp_newgrad

Appreciate the detail on the second problem. The optimization thing is tricky because you never know if they're actually checking for runtime efficiency or just correctness. Sounds like correctness won here.

ml_mike

Two mediums and no SQL is surprising for a company that runs a lot of data-heavy operations. Were you applying for a pure SWE role or was there any data engineering flavor to the job description?

hardware_hugo

Pure SWE. Backend-leaning from the JD. I think if you apply for a data or analytics role the assessment is probably different. At least that's what the recruiter implied when I asked.

bootcamp_bri

This gives me hope. I've been avoiding applying to Mars because I assumed it was some super rigid enterprise process. Sounds more approachable than I thought.

de_derek

Five business days to hear back is honestly fast. I applied to a similar role at a different CPG company and waited three weeks for OA results. Mars seems to move more intentionally.