I applied online. I interviewed at NatWest Group (London, England)
Interview
it is a competency based interview. they ask you about the motivation and some questions like "tell me a time when you", it touches some about the technical skills. they do provide an interveiw guideline before the interview so you can better prepare.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
how can you in line with natwest purpose of helping potential or individuals / business?
why do you wanna to apply to this role ?
Screening call was routine. The interview began on schedule and ended on schedule. Started with technical questions and the level of questions for a VP level was very low. 2 basic technical questions later, they switched to behavioral- to describe STAR based situations which showed the fit for their 3 behaviours.
The interviewers seemed to zone out during the interview and 0 probing or follow up questions. One of the two panelists seemed to be asking random questions for the sake of it, it was clear he did not look at my resume beforehand and didn't bother listening to me because his questions were opposite of what I had already spoken.
Very underwhelming and disrespectful experience. Been a week and no response, I don't expect any better from this organisation. Seems like one of those fake job openings.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Examples of how you have tackled situations that showcase their behaviours
I applied online. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at NatWest Group (Gurgaon, Haryana) in Jun 2025
Interview
Principal Engineer Java - Individual Contributor role in CDIO Fixed Income Platform Team
Duration: 2 weeks between first and last call
The interview process involves two technical rounds followed by a managerial round. In my opinion it was easy. In the first round most of the questions were textbook material. Second round was a system design round but mostly revolved around current system architecture and some basic scenario based questions. The managerial round was typical in terms of questions asked but the interviewer (hiring manager) explained the job role in great detail which was a pleasant surprise
Overall the interviews were conducted very professionally and the scheduler was a thoroughly considerate person.
Salary Negotiation: After sending the documents on Friday, I received a call on Monday but the salary being offered and my expectation had a gap of 9LPA. Althogh the negtiator told me she would check with the hiring manager but I knew that they could not bridge it.
Interview questions [3]
Question 1
Round 1 Questions:
What are solid design principals?
How does spring implement IOC?
Types of interfaces in Java 8?
Pros and cons of the default method in interface?
What is Strategy design pattern?
What is Facade design pattern?
Type of List implementations in Java?
A small spring boot application service implemtation of Finding the highest scoring student of a coaching center and the students who has scored more than 40% marks?
Round 2 Questions:
1. Detailed discussion of my current projects architecute with focus of using transactional outbox pattern to make certain functionalities atomic - Draw
2. How to scale my current project architecture? - Extend the diagram
3. What is the cache goes inconsistent? How to solve it in single instance and distributed environments?
4. How will we transfer large files in response to a request? (GB size)
5. Relational vs Non Relational Databases
Round 3 Questions
1. About my general experience?
2. A situation where you managed team dynamics to achieve best outcomes?
3. What are my achievements in industry till date?
4. A solution that I am proud of?
5. A situation where I faced resistance and had to collect a lot of information to prove my point?
6. Chit chat about salary expecations.