In this post I have covered the application timeline and the interview experience for the position of Web Engineer Intern at Adobe.
It is important to know that Adobe does not have a common interview format for all SDE/Dev intern roles - it is completely team dependent. During my internship, I met interns who had faced 5 rounds and also some who had faced just 2. The process that I have described below may not be the same for everyone.

Application Timeline and some stats:

I started applying for internships even before the start of my masters program, i.e, from July for the following year's summer intake. During the initial months of the academic year I gave just 1 or 2 applications per week and then applied more rigorously starting from September. In total, I applied to 160+ companies for summer internships - of which I was invited to take online assessments/telephonic rounds by 14 companies (including Meta). Of these, I made it to the final rounds of 4 (FormLabs, TikTok, Microsoft and of course, Adobe)

With Adobe, I applied for the Web Engineer Intern role around the last week of October. The application was supported by a referral.

Interview:

• November 5th: I took an Online Assessment on HackerRank. I was asked to solve 1 LeetCode medium question in a span of 45 minutes.
• On November 10th I received an invite to attend the First Round. The following week, the interview was scheduled and I met with the Engineering Manager. The round involved a thorough discussion of my resume and questions around my skillset and interests.
• On November 19th I was moved to the next step with an invite to attend 3 back-to-back technical rounds.
• On Dec 3 I gave 3 technical rounds:
  • Round 1: DSA (LeetCode easy/medium) questions to be solved in JavaScript. I solved it quickly so the interviewer followed up with another DSA question that involved logic with event listeners and DOM manipulation. There were also follow-up questions on JS fundamentals.
  • Round 2: React Deep-dive - I was asked questions around fundamentals of React, how React works under the hood, why React and React architecture.
  • Round 3: Testing frameworks and behavioral questions.
• On Dec 3: The same day, the recruiter working through the process held an impromptu follow up round over the phone. It was much like a behavioral round. At the end of the call, I was given verbal confirmation of the offer.
• On Dec 6: I received the offer letter.

What I loved about the process:

• For both First round and the Technical rounds - I emailed the recruiter asking them what to expect from the interview. Both times, they promptly got back to me and gave me a gist of what to expect. It really helped me align my preparation in the right direction.

• Before the technical round - I received an email that highlighted who the interviewers were along with a link to their respective LinkedIn profiles. I was initially intimidated when I saw all three of them had at least 8 years of experience in the industry with one of them having an experience of 15 years in Adobe alone. However, I was also equally thrilled knowing I'll be able to interact 1:1 with these distinguished individuals. It was clear that I will get to learn a lot irrespective of how the interview went.

• The questions in each of the technical rounds were extremely relevant to the role itself. There were no random LeetCode graph/tree problems asked. The questions were around things I now use in the job day to day.

• Overall, the process was very seamless and I had a positive experience. The people I interacted with were amazing. Communication was clear and prompt. At the end of each round they all answered my questions with great clarity. These were some of the highlights.

If you made it this far, find me on twitter where I post a lot about my journey as a Software Engineer. Please stay tuned for my upcoming posts. I will be sharing some of the questions I asked my interviewers, about interview prep, explaining how my internship went and how I landed SDE 2 at Adobe.