1p3a Experience · Feb 2026

Smartsheet Senior Software Engineer Interview Experience

SWE Behavioral Senior Hard

Interview Experience

Role: Senior Software Engineer HR Screening (15 mins) Initially received a call from HR through a referral. The discussion was around: Current project and responsibilities Tech stack being used How I

Full Details

Role: Senior Software Engineer HR Screening (15 mins) Initially received a call from HR through a referral. The discussion was around: Current project and responsibilities Tech stack being used How I handle scale and high-traffic scenarios It was a brief and smooth conversation.

Round 1 DSA Round Question 1: Given a set of numbers and a target value,

return all possible ways to construct a set whose sum equals the target. The same number can be used multiple times. (This is similar to a backtracking / combination sum problem.)

Follow-up Question: Modify the solution such that: A number can be used only as many times as it appears in the input set. Also generate set of number used. Focus was on: Correct approach Handling edge cases Time and space complexity

Round 2 System Design (Live Chat Application) The round started with discussion about: Past projects Overall experience Then I was asked to design a chat application for users watching a live event. Key discussion points: Functional requirements (real-time messages, ordering, scalability) Handling large number of concurrent users How to fetch old message High-level architecture and data flow

Round 3 System Design (Playo-like Application) Asked to design an application similar to Playo. Requirements included: Users should be able to view free playground Users should be able to make and modify booking Admin should be able to revise bookings and manage data Discussion focused on: Entity design API design Handling conflicts in bookings(most imp) Scalability considerations

Round 4 Hiring Manager Round This round was a deep dive into: Projects I have worked on Technical challenges faced and how I solved them Key learnings from past experience Also included leadership and behavioral questions such as: How I resolve conflicts within a team Decision-making in difficult situations Final Step: Aptitude Test There was a short aptitude test at the end, mainly to assess logical and analytical thinking.

Verdict waiting

About This Question

This is a candidate experience report from a smartsheet interview for a swe role (senior level) during the behavioral round reported in 2026.

It covers the following topics: System Design, Backtracking, Behavioral, Recursion, Stack .

Difficulty rating: Hard