2026 Zscaler India Campus SDE Prep: 37 Past OA / Interview Experiences (Part 4 :)

Continued from Part 3. The earlier FastPrep links will be added after those parts are published.

Coverage: Detailed timelines 17–24. This part covers general SWE, Java, C/DevOps, DevTest, UI/Frontend, UI DevTest, and Associate SWE campus reports from 2023.

36 detailed candidate timelines, loops, and screens （continued

17: General Software Engineer — competitive programming OA, then projects

Interview date: June 2023 · Role: Software Engineer · Location: Bengaluru · Process: Campus recruitment · Result: No offer

1. The college eligibility rule was 60% or a 6.0 GPA.
2. The OA had four competitive-programming questions.
3. The report names Math, Array, String, and Graph as the four areas but does not save the prompts.
4. The next round focused on the candidate’s projects.
5. No later question list was published.

18: Java Software Developer — basics had to be shown in code

Interview date: November 2023 · Role: Java Software Developer · Location: Mohali, Punjab · Process: Campus drive · Result: No offer

1. Explain Java basics.
2. Explain OOP.
3. Explain exception handling.
4. Write small code examples for the concepts instead of giving definitions only.
5. The report does not give the exact code tasks or round sequence.

19: SDE intern college drive — separate C Development and DevOps tracks

Interview date: February 2023 · Role: SDE Intern · Location: Bengaluru · Process: College drive · Result: No offer

1. The drive had two tracks.
2. C Development candidates could use only C or C++.
3. DevOps candidates could use any language.
4. The OA had four coding questions.
5. Three saved task areas were robot movement, graph cycle detection, and basic bit manipulation.
6. The fourth prompt and the exact mechanics of the first three were not published.

20: Dev C / DevTest internship — 18-question OA and a C-language disagreement

Role: Dev C / DevTest Intern · Process: Campus

Online assessment — 120 minutes, HackerRank

1. Eighteen questions: three DSA and 15 MCQs.
2. The coding areas were basic array manipulation, a 2D array, and a priority queue.
3. The MCQs covered Computer Networks and Linux commands.
4. Thirteen students were shortlisted.

Technical interview 1 — Tech Lead

1. Tell me about yourself and discuss the resume.
2. Answer C basics, then deeper networking and basic OS.
3. Work on a Bit Masking problem and a String Manipulation problem. The prompts were not saved.
4. This round had a high rejection rate. Three candidates moved on.

Technical interview 2 — Senior Technical Manager

1. Solve a DSA problem in C.
2. The candidate did not have hands-on C practice and solved it in Java. The interviewer did not accept that choice.
3. Discuss OOP.
4. Discuss the resume and hobbies.

The report does not state the final result.

21: UI Developer intern + FTE — JavaScript execution and live React edits

Role: UI Developer Internship + FTE · Process: On-campus · Result: Selected · Total process: About 8–10 days

Online assessment — about 2 hours

1. HTML, CSS, and JavaScript MCQs.
2. Three coding questions.
3. One DOM manipulation task with several tests.
4. The candidate solved everything except one failing DOM test.

Technical interview 1

1. Discuss internships and a project.
2. Answer HTML and CSS questions.
3. Explain how JavaScript works and how JavaScript execution happens.
4. Write a Promise in JavaScript and answer follow-ups about it.
5. Discuss asynchronous programming.
6. Remove duplicate values from an array.
7. The interviewer wanted JavaScript code. The candidate only knew the DSA approaches in C++, so they explained those approaches. The interviewer accepted the reasoning and showed the JavaScript version.

Technical interview 2

1. Rapid-fire questions on React, CSS, and JavaScript.
2. Explain React error boundaries, JavaScript polyfills, and debouncing.
3. Compare null and undefined.
4. Compare local storage and session storage.
5. Edit supplied React code in a HackerRank CodePair session. The candidate completed the changes.

Manager plus HR — about 40 minutes

1. Discuss why someone with a backend internship applied for a frontend role.
2. Explain the internship project.
3. Answer basic HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and React questions.
4. The selected list arrived four or five days later.

22: UI Frontend developer — modified LeetCode tasks and design thinking

Offer date: January 2023 · Role: UI Frontend Developer Intern + FTE · Process: On-campus, Tier-3 college · Result: Selected

Online assessment — 90 minutes

1. Eleven questions total.
2. Three coding questions: one JavaScript task and two modified LeetCode Medium problems with different constraints.
3. One DOM development task in JavaScript.
4. The remaining questions were HTML, CSS, and JavaScript MCQs.
5. The report does not publish the coding prompts.

Technical interview 1 — 60 minutes

1. Introduction and current internship.
2. Two DSA coding questions. The prompts are missing.
3. Build or discuss a frontend application using any framework or library.
4. The interviewer cared about the candidate’s design thinking and asked for optimizations.

Technical interview 2 — 70 minutes

1. Project discussion.
2. Another frontend application-design discussion with optimization follow-ups.
3. JavaScript, React, React Native, and development questions.

HR — 30 minutes

1. Other offers.
2. What the candidate knew about Zscaler.
3. Normal HR questions.
4. The interviewer told the candidate they were selected and discussed pay and location.

23: UI DevTest summer intern — DSA, SQL, UNIX, Git, Postman, and projects

Report date: September 2023 · Role: UI DevTest Summer Intern · Process: On-campus · Result: Selected, later received PPO

Online assessment

1. One DSA question, restricted to Java or JavaScript.
2. One JavaScript implementation task.
3. Seven HTML/CSS/JavaScript MCQs.
4. The prompts were not published.

Technical interview 1 — about 45 minutes

1. Two DSA questions and two SQL questions.
2. Walk through the resume and briefly explain projects.
3. For a group project, state the candidate’s own contribution.
4. Give real-world uses of OOP and explain the basics.
5. Write UNIX command syntax and explain each command.
6. Write Git command syntax.
7. Compare clone and fork, pull request and push, and explain how to resolve a merge conflict.

Technical interview 2 — about 1 hour 10 minutes

1. Two more DSA questions and two more SQL questions.
2. Deep project discussion, especially a hackathon project and the candidate’s role.
3. Explain HTTP error codes.
4. Answer C concepts.
5. Show CRUD operations in Postman.
6. Discuss APIs used in the projects.
7. Discuss achievements and skills.

There was no HR round for this summer internship. The candidate received the selection email one week later and later earned a PPO based on internship performance.

24: Associate SWE fresher — matrix DP, synchronization, and network flow

Report date: January 2023 · Role: Associate Software Engineer, fresher · Process: On-campus · Result: Rejected

The public report preserves these questions but not a clean round-by-round sequence:

1. Find a minimum-cost path through a matrix. The full movement rules were not saved.
2. Solve a minimum-jumps or Jump Game variant.
3. Solve Data Stream as Disjoint Intervals.
4. Explain multithreading, semaphores, mutexes, and critical sections.
5. Explain TCP and the OSI model.
6. Explain the data flow after a user clicks a link.
7. Explain DHCP, IP, IPv4 versus IPv6, the Data Link layer, and DNS.

Part 5 continues with timelines 25–32.

Frontend, DevTest, and C roles did not use the same question mix. Prepare for the track on your campus.