Many students feel that Fintech interviews are no less difficult than those at big firms.PayPalRecently, Programhelp has received many inquiries from students who are preparing for PayPal OA. Recently, we at Programhelp have received a lot of inquiries from students who are preparing for PayPal OA, including those who have already received invitations to the online written test, those who are ready to go through the inbound channel, and those who have brushed up the questions for many times but still do not have a sense of "test feeling". Combining the practice feedback of these real students and the PayPal high-frequency question bank we accumulated in the past, this article will help you comprehensively disassemble the question style, common difficulties and solution ideas of PayPal OA. If you are preparing for the PayPal interview, then read on!
PayPal SDE II OA Basic Information
PayPal's SDE II positions are usually for engineers with 2 to 5 years of development experience, so the difficulty, question design, and dimension of the OA section will be a bit higher compared to the school recruiting. Below are the key points and forms of the OA process that have been organized recently:
1. Examination platform
Codility: Most SDE II positions at PayPal utilize the Codility platform, and some positions (especially related to data platforms/risk control platforms) also have use of HackerRank.
Examination environment: Turn on Camera + Screen Monitor, do not allow screen cut or open other programs, the system automatically records mouse/keyboard/screen cut behavior.
2. Structure of the topic
quantity of questions: 3 Programming Questions
Time limit: 90 minutes to complete all questions
Question Difficulty Distribution:
An Easy-Medium question to warm up or test basic skills (e.g. string processing, array scanning);
A Medium question, often with Hash / Stack / Queue applications;
A Medium-Hard or Hard level question covering high-frequency interview topics such as graphs, concurrent sets, shortest paths, and dynamic programming.
bonus points: Behaviors such as writing complete annotations, providing multiple test samples, and optimizing time complexity can sometimes be used as a basis for screening.
3. Scoring criteria
PayPal's OA is not just about brushing up on the questions, the judgment is really quite detailed, such as whether you have gone through all the test cases, whether the time complexity has been written well, whether the boundary cases have been taken into account (such as empty inputs, duplicate numbers and so on), all these are the basic requirements. In addition, the code style will also be looked at, variable names are not clear, function written neatly or not, may affect the overall impression. The more hidden point is - the system will actually record the number of times you submit and frequency, if you change back and forth too many times, may also be considered unclear thinking or poor stability. So if you want to get a high score, you need to brush through the questions and write like an engineer!
4. Frequently asked questions
Sliding window, stack/queue handling
Hash tables + double traversal
Concurrent set search, graph search (DFS/BFS)
Minimum spanning tree, topological ordering
Simplified versions of system simulation questions (e.g., Task Scheduler, Job Queue)
Core algorithm optimization (e.g., O(n^2) to O(nlogn) reconstruction)
PayPal OA Real Question Reduction + Solution Ideas
Title 1: Vowels
Given a string array that contains n elements, each composed of lowercase English letters, and q queries, each query of the format l - r. For each query, determine how many strings starting from index l and ending at index r have vowels as the first and last character. Vowels are in {a, e, i, o, u}.
Example:strArr = ["aba", "bcb", "ece", "aa", "e"]queries = ["1 - 3", "2 - 5", "2 - 2"]
These strings represent two dash - delimited integers l And r, the start and end indices of the interval, inclusive. Using 1 - based indexing in the string array.
- The interval
1 - 3contains two strings that start and end with a vowel.abaAndece. - The interval
2 - 5also has three. - The third interval, from
2 - 2, the only element in the interval, and the only element in the interval, and the only element in the interval, and the only element in the interval.bcb, does not begin and end with a vowel.
The return array for the queries is [2, 3, 0].
Function Description
Complete the hasVowels function in the editor below. It must return an array of integers that represent the result of each query in the order.
#include
using namespace std.
/* * Complete the 'hasVowels' function below.
* Complete the 'hasVowels' function below.
/* * Complete the 'hasVowels' function below.
* The function is expected to return an INTEGER_ARRAY.
* The function accepts the following parameters: * 1. STRING_ARRAY strArr
* 1. STRING_ARRAY strArr
* 2. STRING_ARRAY query
*/STRING_ARRAY strArr * 2.
vector hasVowels(vector strArr, vector query) {
}
int main() {
}Title 2: First Unique Character
A unique character is one that appears only once in a string. Given a string consisting of lowercase English letters only, return the index of the first Given a string consisting of lowercase English letters only, return the index of the first occurrence of a unique character in the string using 1 - based indexing. If the string does not contain any unique character, return -1.
Example:s = "statistics"
The unique characters are [a, c] among which a Using 1 - based indexing, it is at index 3.
Function Description
Complete the function getUniqueCharacter in the editor below.
#include
using namespace std.
/* * Complete the 'getUniqueCharacter' function below.
* Complete the 'getUniqueCharacter' function below.
/* * Complete the 'getUniqueCharacter' function below.
* The function is expected to return an INTEGER. * The function accepts STRING s as parameter.
* The function accepts STRING s as parameter.
*/
int getUniqueCharacter(string s) {
}
int main() {
}Topic 3: Load on systems
There are 7 computers in a network numbered from 0 to 6. Each network request is assigned to one of those computers. Hash function used for that is h(id) = id % 7. Which computer will have maximum load if the request ids are. 17, 27, 16, 5, 11, 13, 9, 23, 25
Pick ONE option.
60 and 124 and 5
Topic 4: Find the value
What will be the value of X after the execution of the following code.
int x = 1; for (int i = 1; i <= 128; i += i) {
for (int i = 1; i <= 128; i += i) {
x += x; }
}Pick ONE option.
6448256128
Topic 5: Time Complexity of Searching a Linked List
What is the time complexity to find an element in a linked list of length n?
Pick ONE option.
O(log₂n)O(n)O(1)O(n²)
Topic 6: Aggregate Marks
There is a database containing the marks of some students in various subjects. The data may contain any number of subjects for a student.
Retrieve the records of students who have a sum of marks greater than or equal to 500. The result should be in the following format. STUDENT_ID, SUM_OF_MARKS sorted descending by STUDENT_ID.
Schema
(Sample Data Table not fully shown, but SQL query framework is given)
-- Enter your query below. Please append a semicolon ';' at the end of the query
SELECT STUDENT_ID, SUM(MARKS) AS SUM_OF_MARKS
FROM marks
GROUP BY STUDENT_ID
HAVING SUM(MARKS) >= 500
ORDER BY STUDENT_ID DESC.Topic 7: SQL Join
The Venn diagram below illustrates a JOIN operation on table A And B. The shaded area is the records returned by the operation.
Which type of JOIN will produce such result?
Pick ONE option.
INNER JOINLEFT JOIN
Recommendations
| typology | Recommended Topics |
|---|---|
| Sliding Window | Leetcode 239, 643, 1004 |
| Hash / Set | 128 Longest Consecutive Sequence, 149 Max Points |
| Graph / Union-Find | 684, 990, 1319 |
| Heap / Greedy | 295 Find Median from Data Stream, 857 Min Cost |
| System simulation questions | 621 Task Scheduler, 218 Skyline Problem |
Programhelp｜PayPal Onshore Assist Service
PayPal's OA is really not simple, and many students still feel unsure after brushing the questions. We at Programhelp specialize in coaching for technical exams, and our team has helped a large number of candidates pass the online written exams and interviews of PayPal, Stripe, Amazon, Meta and other big companies.
What can we help you with?
Summarize high-frequency questions + question ideas, and practice PayPal style.
Mock exam training to improve time allocation + answer rhythm
OA Remote on-line ghostwriting without traces to ensure security
Provide voice assistance, professional face-to-face during the VO process
We have served a lot of candidates who are short of time + don't know how to brush up the questions, but still succeeded in going to the bank.
If you are also sprinting for PayPal OA or want to get a big factory offer, welcome to have a chat, we will give you customized advice and assisted solutions according to your actual situation.
