Sabre Interview Experience for Associate Software Engineer | On Campus 2022
Question Details
Recently, Sabre visited our college Thapar Institute of Engineering and Technology, Patiala, to recruit final year engineering students. The eligibility criteria were as f...
Full Details
Recently, Sabre visited our college Thapar Institute of Engineering and Technology, Patiala, to recruit final year engineering students. The eligibility criteria were as follows: Education degree : BE in Computer Science and Engineering (COE/CSE), Electronics and Computer Engineering (ENC), and Electronics and Communication Engineering (ECE) Year of passing : 2022 Marks : 7 CGPA or more, in all semesters for which results are declared, as on date of hiring event Backlogs : No active backlogs, as on date of hiring event Job Location : Bengaluru Round 1 Coding Round + Aptitude 1.5 hour: Around 235 students were allowed to take the test who satisfied the eligibility criteria. Round 1 consists of (No Negative Marking) 20 Aptitude questions (includes sequences, reasoning, logic, etc.) 25 CS Fundamentals questions which were a mixture of Operating Systems, Database Management Systems, SQL, OOPS, and Output based questions. 2 coding questions (Languages Allowed: C, C++, Java, Python) Coding Questions were of medium to hard level problems which were as follows: Given N strings find all the connections among the strings. Two strings are directly connected if they are of the same length and differ in exactly one alphabet. The connections also follow the Transitivity Rule, ie if string A is connected to string B and string B is connected to string C, then string A is also connected to string C Write a program that accepts N-words and print the chain of all words that can be created by following the above constraints print them in a single line if one chain can be formed else if multiple chains are possible then print them in separate lines in the order of input Input Format: The first line of input contains N, the number of strings. Next N lines contain N strings.
Output Format: One or multiple lines of output contain the various connected strings. The connected strings are separated by a single white space. The sequence of output is according to the input.
Sample Input: 5 CAR BET BAR BAT BED Sample Output: CAR BAR BAT BET BED Explanation1: All the strings have the same length. Here, CAR is connected to BAR as A and R have a match. Similarly, BAR is connected to BAT, BAT is connected to BET and BET is connected to BED. Due to the Transitivity Rule, as all are inter-connected, they are printed in the same line. Similar Question : https://leetcode.com/problems/word-ladder-ii/ https://www.naukri.com/code360/problem-details/count-nodes-within-k-distance_992849 18 students were shortlisted from round 1 to follow up for round 2.
Note: Candidates will be heavily filtered after this round. So, you need to solve a good no. of questions to get shortlisted for further rounds. Advice: If you find the coding questions difficult, then try to solve the maximum no. of aptitude and cs fundamental questions. It will increase your chance to get shortlisted. Round 2 (Technical Round 1 hour): Scheduled on Microsoft Teams. We started by greeting each other. The interviewer was a senior software engineer. Then, Interviewer asked me how was my coding round. She saw my code and then asked me I wasn’t able to solve 1st coding question if I have come up with an approach for the same. Then, I explained to her a brute force approach which I applied during the test. Then, she asked whether I found what was the problem with it. I explained to her the conditions in which my solution would not pass the edge test cases. Then, she asked me to explain the second coding question asked in the previous round. I explained my approach. Then, she asked to analyze time and space complexity for the same question and asked if I could optimize my solution further. I already gave an optimized solution so, we move further. Then, she asked me whether I know Java. But, I usually code in C++ so, I said the same. Thereafter, the following questions were asked from OOP: Explain all the four pillars of OOP i.e. Inheritance, Polymorphism, Encapsulation, and Abstraction with examples. What is an abstract class? Can we create an object of abstract class? Write the syntax of pure virtual function. Then, she asked me the question from Data Structures and Algorithms. I was asked the following dynamic programming coding question: https://leetcode.com/problems/decode-ways/ She explained the question and asked me to code for the same. I coded the above solution on my personal IDE with screen sharing. First of all, I told her about what I deduced from the problem and then told her a recursive approach. Since the recursive approach was bad in time complexity. So, I showed the overlapping problems by taking the test case and move towards the Dynamic Programming approach. In the end, I managed to solve the problem with DP but one test case was stuck. So, she told me to check for the conditions I applied for. But according to me, the approach was all correct. So, she asked me to dry run my solution for that test case. But then, we ran out of time and the round was finished. I wasn’t sure if I would be clearing this round. But then, the list came and I was shortlisted for a further round.
Note: If you get stuck take help from the interviewer. Always keep on telling your approach and what you are thinking. They want to check your thought process for the problem and how you tackle it. 14 students were shortlisted for the Managerial Round. Round 3 (Managerial Round 30 minutes): Scheduled on Microsoft Teams. The interviewer was a senior engineering manager. He asked me to introduce myself and then we straight move towards the project. He asked me to explain any one project from my resume whichever I find to be comfortable with telling. So, I explain my project and it took me around 10 minutes for the same to tell each and everything in detail with all technicalities involved in-depth. He then asked me some questions related to the project. I answer all his questions and then he asked me to show the source code of my project if it is pushed on Github or available with me on my laptop. Unfortunately, I wasn’t having the source code of my project since it was a team project. Then, he made up some situations that I can face as a software engineer to check my thought process. The questions were like how you’ll convince your project leader to go with your design etc. The round lasted for sharp 30 minutes and then he told me if I have any questions for him. I asked a question and then after it, he said I would get another link to give the HR round. I was happy to listen to it as HR was the last round of the process. Tips: Be thorough with your project and try to cover all sorts of questions made from them. Be ready with the source code of your project. Round 4 (HR 20 minutes): Scheduled on Microsoft Teams. The interviewer began by telling me to introduce myself. Then, she asked me about the specialty of my hometown. Then asked me about my weaknesses. Then, she told me to tell something that wasn’t listed on my resume. I told her about my non-technical stuff which I did in different societies during my initial years. She seemed impressed with it. Then she looked at my academic background and praised that I managed a good academic record and co-curricular activities. She enquired whether I am having a plan to go for a master's in the future. To which I said I have no such plans. Then she concluded and asked if I am having any questions for her and round finished. Tips: Try to be realistic and don’t give the crammed answers. In this round, they want to know you as a person. So, talk with them as you talk with your friends. Finally, 8 were selected from our college for 6 months internship and full-time offer and I was one of them.
Verdict Selected
About This Question
This is a reported interview question from a sabre interview for a eng manager role (intern level) during the recruiter round reported in 2025.
It covers the following topics: Strings, Dynamic Programming, Recursion, Sql, Os, Oop .
Difficulty rating: Hard
More Sabre Interview Questions
About Sabre Interview Reports
This question was reported by a candidate who interviewed at Sabre. LeakCode aggregates interview reports from 10+ sources, including 1Point3Acres, Glassdoor, LeetCode Discuss, Blind, Reddit, Indeed, and Nowcoder. Each report is translated where necessary, deduplicated against existing entries, and tagged by company, role, round type, and reporting date.
Use this question as one calibration data point, not a memorization target. Companies typically rotate their question pools every 2-4 months; the exact wording of a 2024 question may differ from what you encounter today. The underlying pattern, difficulty level, and follow-up depth at Sabre are the higher-signal extractions to take from this report.
For broader preparation context, the Sabre interview process typically includes a recruiter screen, one or two technical phone screens, and a 4-5 round on-site loop covering coding, system design (at L4+ levels), and behavioral. Reports tagged on LeakCode show the round-by-round distribution and typical difficulty calibration. To browse questions filtered by round type and seniority, use the company hub linked above.
How To Practice This Type of Question
Solve similar problems on LeetCode under timed conditions (25-35 minutes per medium difficulty). The goal is pattern recognition: recognize the underlying technique (sliding window, two-pointer, BFS, memoized recursion, etc.) within 60-90 seconds of reading. Strong candidates verbalize their hypothesis out loud before coding, then iterate based on feedback. Weak candidates dive into implementation immediately, lose time on the wrong approach, and run out of time for follow-ups.
Companies update their question pools every 2-4 months. The exact wording of any given question may have been retired by the time you interview. Focus your prep on the pattern, not the specific problem. The patterns that appear in Sabre reports consistently are the ones worth investing in; one-off niche problems are not.
During Your Sabre Round
Apply the standard interview round template: clarify requirements (2-3 minutes), state your approach out loud and confirm direction with the interviewer (3-5 minutes), code with narration (15-25 minutes), test with concrete examples including edge cases (5 minutes), discuss optimization or trade-offs if time permits (5 minutes). This template is universally accepted across FAANG and adjacent companies; deviating from it produces weaker interviewer feedback signal.
The single most predictive failure mode in Sabre reports tagged "no hire": not asking clarifying questions. Interviewers are explicitly trained to weight this. Strong candidates ask 3-5 clarifying questions even on problems that look obvious; weak candidates dive into code immediately. The clarifying-question check is often the first signal recorded in the interviewer's written notes.