Nike Software Engineer 2 Interview Experience: Java Spring and System Design
Interview Experience
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Round 1 Bar-Raiser (Conducted by 3rd Party)** This round focused on core technical competency and fundamental coding. 1. DSA: One Medium-level problem (focused on Array/String manipulation). 2. Tec
Full Details
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Round 1 Bar-Raiser (Conducted by 3rd Party)** This round focused on core technical competency and fundamental coding. 1. DSA: One Medium-level problem (focused on Array/String manipulation). 2. Technical: Deep dive into Java 8+ features, Spring Boot annotations, and Bean lifecycle.
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Round 2 Technical Round (Conducted by Nike SE-3)** A heavy emphasis on algorithmic problem-solving and optimization. 1. Problem 1 (Dynamic Programming): A variation of the Knapsack or Coin Change problem. Focused on transition states and space optimization. 2. Problem 2 (Binary Search): A "Binary Search on Answer" type question. 3. Some AWS theory questions. Discussion: We discussed time and space complexity ($O(n \log n)$ vs $O(n)$) extensively. **
Round 3 Technical & Design (Conducted by Engineering Manager)** This round pivoted toward system architecture and clean code.
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System Design Asked to Design a Rate Limiter. We discussed various algorithms like Token Bucket, Leaking Bucket, and Fixed Window Counter. 2. Java/Spring Boot: Questions on multithreading, Exception Handling in Spring, and Dependency Injection.
3. SOLID Principles: I had to explain each principle with real-world examples from my previous projects. 4. The AWS Part: I was honest with the manager that while I’m strong in Java/Spring Boot, I haven't had much "hands-on" production experience with AWS yet. - Theory: Because of that, the questions were more theoretical to see if I understood the concepts. We talked about: - EC2 vs. Lambda (when to use which). - S3 for storage vs. RDS. - Using SQS/SNS for decoupling services.
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Round 4 Hiring Manager Round** Mostly behavioral but with a few technical "high-level" curveballs.
Behavioral Focused on Nike’s core values, handling conflict in a team, and my experience with CI/CD (Jenkins). Technical: Discussed scalability and how I approach learning new technologies. Vibe: Very casual and conversational. # And finally got the offer from Nike.
About This Question
This is a candidate experience report from a nike interview for a swe role during the system design round reported in 2026.
It covers the following topics: Arrays, Strings, Binary Search, System Design, Dynamic Programming, Oop, Behavioral .
Difficulty rating: Medium