Sam's Club/Walmart SDE 3 Interview Experience - Successful
Mostly a lurker but wanted to give back to the community since during my job search this subreddit was really useful for either inspiration or guidance. Here is my recent interview experience for the SDE 3 role at Sam's Club. This role was based in the US.
Side Note, the position was specifically for Sam's Club but the interview experience should be the same for walmart as well I imagine.
I applied cold in December 2025 - March 2025 (so over 3 months) for Walmart or Sam's Club positions, I think I sent them like 40 applications where most were rejected before screening (I had the mindset of quantity of quality)
Fast forward to March of this year and a recruiter reached out to tell me they're interested in interviewing me for one of the positions I applied for.
Online Assessment - This is where my experience differed from what I read online, it seems like some people got a Karat assignment for this portion, whereas I got a hackerrank assessment.
The assessment involved 3 questions
- Medium leetcode type question
- FrontEnd debugging question
- Backend question
I was specifically asked to complete the frontend in react which is what they used, I was free to use other languages for the leetcode and backend question.
They allowed the use of an AI tool for the frontend/backend question, you can ask it questions about contents of a file etc.
I was able to get 100% passes on the leetcode and backend, but struggled with the frontend where I only got 11/15 passes.
The recruiter reached back shortly and told me they'd like to move forward to the final virtual loop.
I was told that the next round would only be scheduled if I passed the previous one, and was told there would be 3 rounds in total.
DSA/Algo
System Design
Behavioral
DSA/Algo Round
It was 2 questions in total, the first was a Java backend question.
Task 1: Filter a list of products based on custom attributes then return a list of products matching a certain criteria.
The prompt was intentionally left highly ambiguous to test how I gathered requirements—make sure you ask clarifying questions! After gathering requirements and clarifying coding the solution was fairly straight forward, I grabbed the list of products and parse their attributes then return a list of products which matched said criteria.
One thing to note is that they really emphasized speaking aloud to see my thought process on how I solve it. They weren't looking for syntax correctness and I wasn't even asked to compile/run the code.
Task 2: Some custom variation of Valid Parentheses from leetcode
I don't remember much about this question but it was honestly pretty trivial, just like before they were looking to see my thought process on how I coded the solution, wasn't even asked to compile it. Once completed I was asked for potential optimizations and time/space complexity.
Recruiter reached out saying they'd like to scheduled the system design round next
System Design Round
- Task: Build a phone app system where there is one app which notifies users that a shopping retailer which they're interested in is having a special event (such as a sale). The app can service multiple shopping retailers and users will choose which ones they're interested in.
- I mistakenly designed a client-polling (pull) architecture first. Halfway through the interviewer actually clarified they wanted a system where we are pushing to the apps instead of pulling. I pivoted to a Pub/Sub model, but realized too late that a Fan-out on Write (Push) approach would have been more optimal for scale.
1 month passed and the position I was interviewing for sent a rejection, but the recruiter actually reached back and told me there was a different position which was interested in me. I would go directly to the final behavioral round for that new position instead.
Behavioral Round
- It was standard stuff like "Tell me about a time when..." Just like other behavioral interviews use the STAR format when answering and expect follow up questions to your answers.
A few days later the recruiter reached out to me and told me I passed and that they'd like to extend an offer. There was no team matching involved.
For preparation there aren't that many walmart tagged questions on leetcode and I'm not sure how up to date the ones on leetcode were. In general it was harder to find resources online about what to expect in the final loop and I read many differing experiences which I myself did not experience (such as the system design being partially low level design which I didn't face).
I generally just solved leetcode problems daily, used Hello Interview premium for system design and rehearsed my STAR stories.
One thing to note is that I was juggling final loop interviews with 2 other companies when my system design round happened and so I chalk up my incompetence due to this (yes I know I'm coping).
I hope this helps anyone and good luck on your job search journeys!