I applied online. The process took 1 week. I interviewed at Citi (Toronto, ON) in Apr 2025
Interview
1. Just a quick talk with the recruiter over the phone. Nothing too difficult.
2. The interview was handled by a third-party company called Karat. I was not aware but the first 20 minutes is system design, and the next 40 minutes was an easy coding problem.
I did not enjoy the system design part but I suppose its good experience. Karat interviewer was some guy from Turkey who was really strict.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Question 1 (20 minutes): 1) First part was a system design question where I had to guess what's wrong or improve it. I'll attempt to describe it. Maybe you can find this question online. There was a client who's call went through a WAF, which then directed the call to one of two load balances (so think of the WAF box with two arrows going to two different load balancers called "Load balancer 1" and "Load balancer 2".
Load balancer 1 was in charge of API calls called notifications, and Load Balancer 2 was in charge of the products API call. Both load balancers had 3 servers each. Load balancer 1 had servers 1, 2, and 3, while Load balancer 2 had servers 4, 5, and 6. Only server 6 was connected for logging. Servers 4,5, directly called a singular database. I suggested adding a master-slave. Load balancer 2 had an uptime of 90% but was unstable? Servers 1,2 and 3, were all connected to a messaging queue that relayed messages. Each of the servers was in charge of its own authentication.
Question 2: really easy. I was given code and just had to figure out what why the tests were wrong and had to fix it. First part was just adding a missing "OR" statement lol. Next part was just coding up two methods.
I applied online. I interviewed at Citi (Plano, TX) in Jun 2026
Interview
The process started with an email from the recruiter, followed by a recorded Kata video interview conducted by a third-party interviewer.
The coding questions themselves were relatively straightforward. However, the interview format was frustrating and did not seem designed to accurately assess coding ability. Before writing any code, I was required to explain my implementation approach. The interviewer repeatedly challenged and questioned the proposed solution, often steering the discussion toward alternative directions that felt confusing rather than constructive.
As a result, approximately 10-15 minutes of a 25-minute interview were spent discussing the approach, leaving only about 10 minutes for coding. This was not enough time to properly implement, test, and run the solution. The constant interruptions made it difficult to make meaningful progress and created an environment that felt more focused on catching mistakes than evaluating problem-solving skills.
Overall, the experience felt poorly structured and did not provide a fair opportunity to demonstrate coding ability.
Don't waste your time interviewing at Citi
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
First 10 minute - Java related questions
40 minute : 1 find bug and fix and second writing two methods
I applied through a recruiter. I interviewed at Citi
Interview
Prejudged interview, extremely unfriendly. I don't know why wasted time, if you don't like cv. It felt like somebody digging to find only flows and negatives. asking weird questions only policy. Don't waste your time here.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
why you have worked some places only one year, tell me something stood test of times.
