Oracle overall pace of this session of 26NG SDE is really fast, from Screening to 5 rounds of VO to HM call, it is almost seamless. Many students have reported that the process is highly standardized, the interviewer's style is more practical, and the coding questions are very detailed. There are basically no "casual chat" rounds. Each round is carefully selected. Here is a summary of some experiences based on the one we just completed.
Offer Timeline (for reference only)
The overall process is fast-paced: Recruiter Screening or direct technical interview will be received within 1-3 weeks after submission; Screening mainly confirms background and matching, and usually notifies whether to enter VO within 3-7 days.之后是 15–30 分钟的 Hiring Manager call，偏 team fit，通常 3–10 天出结果。这次面的这个组，流程是先给 verbal offer，再走内部审批。 The overall process takes 3-6 weeks.
Oracle 26NG SDE practical review
Round 1 – LRU Cache
The first round of VO is a classic LRU cache, without any foreshadowing, just let you talk about your ideas and then start writing.
The conventional solution is of course HashMap + Doubly Linked List, the key point is to ensure that get and put are both O (1). However, Oracle's interviewer was obviously not satisfied with the template answer. After writing it, he immediately started to follow-up: What if it is a multi-threaded environment? How to reduce lock contention? Is there a more scalable solution?
The feeling of this round is - the questions are not difficult, but the depth depends on how much engineering you can talk about. If you only stay at the LeetCode level, it is easy to continue to ask questions.
Round 2 – Merge Sorted Lists
The rhythm of this round is very typical: start with a relatively simple merge two sorted lists, and when you finish writing quickly, immediately upgrade to Merge K Sorted Lists.
The interviewer is actually observing two things: whether you take the initiative to analyze the complexity, and whether you know a better solution. After writing the double linked list solution, if you mention that you can use min heap to reduce the complexity to O (N log K), you will basically be considered to have a mature idea.
The overall pressure of this round is not high, but it is very testing of basic skills - it is a question of "you won't fail, but you can widen the gap".
Round 3 – Delete Target Leaf Nodes from Binary Tree
The third round is a typical recursive tree problem: delete all leaf nodes whose value is equal to target. But the real difficulty is that when leaf is deleted, its parent node may become a new leaf, and further judgment needs to be made.
This is actually to test whether you have good recursion design capabilities, such as whether you know how to use post-order traversal, and whether you can directly tell the parent node "should I be deleted" through the return value.
The interviewer looks at the readability of the code very carefully, including naming, structure, and whether there is redundant logic. If you write it down as a whole, you will find that Oracle does have requirements for "production-style code", rather than just whether it can AC.
Round 4 – Project Deep Dive + Coding
The first half is a deep dive into your resume, and it's very detailed. From why the system is designed like this, to tradeoffs, to how to optimize it if it is reworked, almost every point will be questioned. In fact, many people are not hung up on coding, but stuck here - because they are not familiar enough with their projects.
The second half of the coding is to design a Hospital Appointment Booking API. The scenario is that there are 1000 doctors in the hospital, and each doctor works from 9AM to 5PM, one slot every 15 minutes. The API requires booking the "earliest available" time for a given doctor on a given date and maintains state across multiple POST requests.
This question is essentially about lightweight system design. How to model doctor and slot? How to quickly find earliest availability? How to avoid double booking? What if there is concurrency? As soon as you start talking proactively about optimistic locking, data structure selection, or state management, the interviewer will usually nod frequently.
This round is very much about engineering thinking, not algorithmic skills.
Round 5 – Hiring Manager Call
The last round is HM behavior, there is no algorithm, but don’t let your guard down. The interviewer focused on two directions: How do you usually do prioritization? How do you deal with a system failure that affects customers? The main thing is not to ask you to memorize STAR, but to see if you think like a reliable team member.
Learn more
In the past few years, we have followed up a lot of interview processes in the direction of Oracle NG, Intern and OCI. Many students actually have sufficient technical reserves, but when they are nervous in high-intensity VO, their ideas are interrupted and their expressions are confused. We focus on major North American manufacturers Interview assistance : VO real-time idea prompts + on-site rhythm control. Human assistance from North American CS experts can accurately hit the test points. It is more reliable than AI and helps you to land steadily.
