Interview experience
Infosys interview experiences covering IRT, Technical Interview, HR Interview. Round-wise notes, common questions, and what candidates report clears each stage.
Infosys Interview Questions and Answers (2026)
Infosys is a global IT services and consulting company and one of India's largest campus recruiters for engineering graduates. Founded in 1981 and headquartered in Bengaluru, it delivers digital transformation, cloud, and application development services to clients across industries worldwide.
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Overview
Infosys funnels most freshers through a single test (the IRT) into a standard Systems Engineer role, but a separate path - InfyTQ certification or the HackWithInfy coding contest - routes strong coders into the higher-paying Specialist Programmer/DSE track with a much harder interview.
HR interview questions
Infosys HR interview questions with sample answer frameworks - motivation, relocation, STAR stories, and culture-fit prompts.
Infosys interview process at a glance
| Round | Duration | Focus Areas | Success Rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| IRT | ~100-180 minutes | Aptitude, Reasoning, Coding | ~20% clear |
| Technical Interview | 30-50 minutes | Programming, Core Subjects, Projects (deeper for SP/DSE) | ~70% of IRT qualifiers |
| HR Interview | 20-30 minutes | Behavioral, Company Fit | ~90% of technical qualifiers |
Infosys online assessment: quick answers
These answers are compiled from public candidate reports and prep guides, not from an official notice, and drives differ. The instruction screen of your own test is the final word.
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Does it have negative marking? | No. PrepInsta’s 2026 off-campus pattern and the other guides checked all list no negative marking. |
| Is there a sectional cutoff? | Yes. You must clear each section separately. Infosys does not publish the numbers; PrepInsta’s 2026 page estimates about 65 percent each for reasoning, verbal, pseudocode and puzzles. |
| Can I go back to an earlier section? | No. Sections are timed separately and you cannot return to one once it closes. |
| What does the roughly 100-minute paper look like? | placementpreparation.io and PrepInsta (both 2026) list the same five MCQ sections: Mathematical Ability (10 questions, 35 minutes), Logical Reasoning (15, 25), Verbal Ability (20, 20), Pseudocode (5, 10) and Puzzle Solving (4, 10). PrepInsta also lists a 5-question English grammar section on its off-campus version. |
| Is there coding? | Not in that five-section paper. The Specialist Programmer and DSE tracks have a separate coding test, covered below. |
| How much is the cutoff? | Not published; each section has its own cutoff and shortlists depend on the batch. The fixed part is eligibility: 60 percent or 6.0 CGPA across 10th, 12th and graduation (one guide says 6.5), no active backlogs during selection and none at joining, and a gap of at most 2 years. |
| Which platform is it on? | Public guides describe it only as an online proctored test; your invite carries the link. SP and DSE candidates usually come through InfyTQ certification or the HackWithInfy coding contest instead. |
| Is there an essay? | Yes on 2026 versions, though timings conflict: placementpreparation.io lists a 20-minute English writing test and PrepInsta a 10-minute one, for about 120 minutes in total. |
Infosys interview questions by track
Your track is decided by the route you came through, and the technical round gets deeper as the band goes up. These are questions candidates report on GeeksforGeeks and Glassdoor; they show the level, not a fixed list.
| Track | Reported questions and topics |
|---|---|
| Systems Engineer (SE) | C pointers, malloc vs calloc, array vs pointer, array vs linked list, normalization (1NF-3NF), second-highest salary in SQL, inheritance with an example, overloading vs overriding, and a palindrome program. |
| Digital Specialist Engineer (DSE) | JVM architecture and the Java collections hierarchy, sorting complexities, binary search written out, and a DSA problem solved live on the coding portal. |
| Specialist Programmer (SP) | Medium-to-hard DSA (DP, graphs, trees, greedy) with at least one problem solved live, database schema design for a system such as an e-commerce platform, indexing, and light system design such as a URL shortener or load balancing. |
| Technology Analyst (lateral) | Java 8 features with scenario questions, the architecture and scalability of your previous project, and the tools you have used hands-on. |
Asked across every track: tell me about yourself, why Infosys, whether you will relocate to any Infosys location, and a project where you learnt a new technology quickly.
Infosys Technology Analyst (lateral) interviews
Technology Analyst is a lateral role for candidates with a few years of experience, so there is no aptitude test. Candidate reports describe three rounds: technical, managerial and HR.
Reported technical questions:
- Java 8 features, followed by scenario-based questions on them
- Your previous project: the architecture, how you handled scalability, and how you balanced performance against maintainability
- The tools and technologies you have used hands-on, and how deep your knowledge goes for the role
- Which technology domain you want to move into next
The managerial round stays on your project ownership and how you work with a client team. Bring one project you can draw on a whiteboard and defend.
IRT (Infosys Recruitment Test)
A multi-section online test - often cited as ~180 minutes on campus drives, though InfyTQ certification screens for off-campus candidates are sometimes reported as ~100 minutes across five blocks (logical reasoning, mathematical ability, verbal, pseudocode, puzzle solving). Section counts and navigation rules vary by batch; treat your official invite as authoritative. This is the steepest filter - only around 1 in 5 candidates clear IRT-style cutoffs in many reports, so sectional time management matters as much as raw accuracy. No negative marking is commonly reported on InfyTQ-style papers, but confirm for your window.
Common questions
- Aptitude and reasoning - numerical ability, logical puzzles, data interpretation, arrangements, syllogisms
- Verbal ability - reading comprehension, grammar, vocabulary
- Pseudocode - output prediction and flow tracing
- Puzzle or game-based aptitude (recent InfyTQ reports)
- Coding section - 1-2 problems, typically array/string manipulation at easy-to-medium level; solving at least one completely is widely reported as important
- Basic programming-logic MCQs alongside coding on some drives
Technical Interview (standard Systems Engineer track)
A 30-45 minute conversation mixing programming fundamentals, core CS subjects, and a detailed project walkthrough. Interviewers lean on “explain with an example” phrasing rather than pure theory recall.
Common questions
- C pointers, memory allocation (malloc/calloc), and array vs pointer differences
- Data structures - when to use an array vs a linked list, stack/queue basics
- DBMS - normalization (1NF/2NF/3NF), SQL query for the second-highest salary, joins
- OOPs - inheritance with an example, method overloading vs overriding
- A coding problem such as checking whether a string is a palindrome
Technical Interview (Specialist Programmer / DSE track)
Reserved for candidates who clear HackWithInfy or score high on InfyTQ. Runs longer (45-50 minutes) and goes considerably deeper than the standard track.
Common questions
- JVM architecture and the Java collections framework hierarchy
- Time complexity of sorting algorithms; implement binary search
- Design a database schema for a given system (e.g. an e-commerce platform) and explain indexing
- Light system-design questions - how would you design a URL shortener? explain load balancing
- A DSA problem solved live on the coding portal in front of the interviewer (recent cycles require this)
Round-by-round breakdowns for both tracks are on the Infosys interview experience page.
HR Interview
A closing 20-30 minute round on motivation and fit - the highest pass-through rate of the three stages, but still not a formality.
Common questions
- Tell me about yourself and why Infosys
- Are you willing to relocate to any Infosys location, including smaller campuses?
- Tell me about a project where you had to learn a new technology quickly to finish it
- Where do you see yourself in five years?
Sample answer frameworks for each of these are on the Infosys HR interview questions page.
Systems Engineer vs Specialist Programmer/DSE: two different bars
Most Infosys freshers go through the standard IRT-to-Systems-Engineer pipeline, where the technical interview tests fundamentals rather than advanced algorithms. A separate, smaller pool reaches Specialist Programmer (SP) or Digital Specialist Engineer (DSE) roles by clearing InfyTQ certification with a high score or performing well in HackWithInfy - Infosys’s own competitive-coding contest. That track’s coding bar (DP, graphs, trees, greedy problems, solved partly live under interviewer observation) and its technical interview (JVM internals, schema design, basic system design) sit well above what a standard Systems Engineer candidate needs to prepare for, and it pays meaningfully more. Know which track your score is routing you into before you decide how deep to go on DSA.
Common technical interview questions and answers
Q: What is the difference between malloc and calloc in C?
Both allocate memory on the heap and return a void pointer that you cast to the required type, but malloc takes one argument, the total number of bytes, and leaves the memory uninitialised with whatever garbage was there before. calloc takes two arguments, the number of elements and the size of each, and zero-initialises every byte it hands back. So malloc(10 * sizeof(int)) and calloc(10, sizeof(int)) reserve the same amount of space, but only the calloc block is guaranteed to start as all zeros. Both return NULL when allocation fails, both must be released with free, and realloc is what you use to resize an existing block.
Q: What is the difference between an array and a pointer in C?
An array name is not a variable holding an address; it is the block of memory itself, and it decays to a pointer to its first element in most expressions, which is why arr[i] and pointer arithmetic behave alike. The differences show up elsewhere: sizeof on a locally declared array of 10 ints gives 40 bytes, while sizeof on a pointer gives the pointer size, typically 8 bytes. You also cannot reassign an array name the way you can reassign a pointer. This is why an array passed to a function arrives as a plain pointer and loses its length, so the length must be passed as a separate argument.
Q: When should you use an array versus a linked list?
Use an array when you need random access or cache-friendly iteration: indexing is O(1) because the address is computed arithmetically, and elements sit contiguously in memory. Use a linked list when you insert and delete frequently in the middle: given a node reference, unlinking is O(1), whereas an array insert or delete shifts the remaining elements in O(n). The trade-offs are the reverse for the other operations, since a linked list needs an O(n) traversal to reach the kth element and pays extra memory for each next pointer. In practice, dynamic arrays win for most workloads because of cache locality, and linked lists are chosen mainly when you need O(1) splicing, as in an LRU cache.
Q: How do you check whether a string is a palindrome?
Put one pointer at the first character and one at the last, compare them, and move both inward, returning false at the first mismatch and true if the pointers meet. That is O(n) time and O(1) space, and it beats reversing the string and comparing, which uses O(n) extra space. If the question asks for a case-insensitive, alphanumeric-only check, skip non-alphanumeric characters while moving each pointer and lowercase both characters before comparing. The recursive variant compares the outer pair and recurses on the substring inside, which is the same time bound but costs O(n) stack space.
Q: What is the difference between method overloading and method overriding?
Overloading means several methods in the same class share a name but differ in the number or types of their parameters; the compiler picks the right one at compile time, so it is static or compile-time polymorphism, and the return type alone is never enough to distinguish overloads. Overriding means a subclass provides a new implementation of an inherited method with the same name, parameter list, and a compatible return type; the JVM picks the implementation at runtime from the object’s actual class, so it is dynamic polymorphism. Overriding cannot reduce the visibility of the method or, in Java, add new checked exceptions, and static, private, and final methods cannot be overridden. Marking the subclass method with the Override annotation makes the compiler catch a mistyped signature that would otherwise silently become an overload.
Q: What are SQL joins, and what does an index actually do?
A join combines rows from two tables on a matching condition. INNER JOIN keeps only matching rows; LEFT JOIN keeps every row from the left table with NULLs where no match exists; RIGHT JOIN does the mirror image; FULL OUTER JOIN keeps unmatched rows from both sides. For example, SELECT s.name, d.dept_name FROM students s LEFT JOIN departments d ON s.dept_id = d.id; lists every student, including those with no department. An index is a separate sorted structure, usually a B-tree, over one or more columns, letting the database find matching rows in O(log n) instead of scanning the whole table. The cost is extra storage plus slower INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE, since every write must also update the index, which is why you index the columns used in WHERE and JOIN conditions rather than every column.
Q: Explain the JVM architecture and the Java Collections hierarchy.
Java source compiles to platform-independent bytecode in a class file, which the JVM loads through the class loader subsystem, verifies, and then executes. Runtime memory splits into the heap for objects (divided into young and old generations for garbage collection), the method area for class metadata, and a per-thread stack holding frames plus a program counter. The execution engine interprets bytecode and promotes hot methods to native code through the JIT compiler. On the library side, the Collections framework hangs off two roots: Collection, with the List, Set, and Queue interfaces beneath it, and Map, which sits separately because it stores key-value pairs. ArrayList gives O(1) indexed access, LinkedList gives O(1) splicing, HashSet and HashMap give average O(1) lookup with no ordering, and TreeMap and TreeSet keep keys sorted with O(log n) operations.
Q: What are the time complexities of the common sorting algorithms, and how do you implement binary search?
Merge sort is O(n log n) in all cases and stable, but needs O(n) extra space. Quicksort averages O(n log n) with O(log n) stack space and sorts in place, but degrades to O(n squared) when pivots are chosen badly, which randomised or median-of-three pivots avoid. Heap sort is O(n log n) worst case in O(1) space but is not stable, while bubble, insertion, and selection sort are all O(n squared), with insertion sort a genuinely good choice for nearly sorted or very small inputs. Binary search then requires a sorted array: keep low and high bounds, compute mid as low + (high - low) / 2 to avoid integer overflow, return on a match, and otherwise move low to mid plus one or high to mid minus one depending on the comparison, halving the range each step for O(log n) time.
Frequently asked questions about Infosys interviews
Does the Infosys online test have negative marking?
No. PrepInsta’s 2026 pattern page and earlier prep guides report no negative marking, but each section has its own cutoff and you cannot return to a section once it closes.
What is the Infosys online test cutoff?
Infosys does not publish one. Each section has its own unpublished cutoff and you cannot return to a closed section; the fixed requirement is eligibility, 60 percent or 6.0 CGPA across 10th, 12th and graduation, no active backlogs and a gap of at most 2 years.
Is there coding in the Infosys online test?
Not in the standard Systems Engineer paper, which has pseudocode questions instead of full coding. Specialist Programmer and DSE candidates face 2-3 medium-to-hard coding problems through InfyTQ or HackWithInfy, and recent cycles add a problem solved live in the interview.
What is asked in an Infosys Technology Analyst interview?
Technology Analyst is a lateral role with technical, managerial and HR rounds. Candidates report Java 8 features with scenario questions, a deep discussion of a previous project’s architecture and scalability, and questions on the tools they have used hands-on.
What is the Infosys interview process for freshers?
Usually 3 stages, through the InfyTQ / Infosys Recruitment Test (IRT): 1. IRT (reported as about 100-180 minutes depending on the drive) - Aptitude, Reasoning, and Coding sections, with roughly 20% of candidates clearing it. 2. Technical Interview (30-50 minutes) - programming, core CS subjects, and project discussion, clearing around 70% of IRT qualifiers. 3. HR Interview (20-30 minutes) - behavioral fit and company motivation, clearing around 90% of technical qualifiers.
What questions are asked in Infosys interviews?
Infosys interviews cover aptitude and reasoning in the IRT, basic-to-medium coding problems and core subjects (OOP, DBMS, OS, networking) in the Technical round, and standard HR questions on relocation, career goals, and motivation for joining Infosys in the final round. Candidates on the Specialist Programmer/Digital Specialist Engineer track get noticeably deeper questions - JVM internals, system design basics, database schema design.
How many rounds are there in the Infosys interview?
Infosys typically runs 3 stages for freshers: the IRT (aptitude + reasoning + coding), a Technical Interview, and an HR Interview. Candidates who clear HackWithInfy or score high on InfyTQ certification get routed into the Specialist Programmer (SP) / Digital Specialist Engineer (DSE) track instead, which adds a harder, longer coding round.
What is the difference between Infosys Systems Engineer and Specialist Programmer (SP) / Digital Specialist Engineer (DSE)?
Systems Engineer is the standard fresher track via the IRT. SP and DSE are separate, higher-paying tracks reached through Infosys’s InfyTQ certification (a year-round learning-and-certification program) or HackWithInfy (an annual competitive coding contest) - both test 2-3 coding problems (medium-to-hard, DP/graphs/trees/greedy) in a much longer window, and in recent cycles candidates have had to solve at least one problem live in front of the interviewer.
How should I prepare for Infosys interviews?
For Infosys, practice aptitude and reasoning alongside basic-to-medium DSA for the IRT, revise core CS fundamentals (OOP, DBMS, OS, networking) for the Technical round, and prepare clear answers on relocation flexibility and why you want to join Infosys for the HR round. If you’re aiming for SP/DSE, prepare HackWithInfy-level DSA (DP, graphs, trees) since that track’s coding bar is much higher than the standard IRT.
How selective is Infosys hiring for freshers?
Selective at the first stage: roughly 20% of IRT candidates clear it. From there the funnel opens up - about 70% of IRT qualifiers clear the Technical Interview, and about 90% of those clear HR, for an overall selection rate of roughly 12-15% of total applicants.
What interviewers score
| Stage | Strong signal | Weak signal |
|---|---|---|
| IRT | Sectional cutoffs cleared + ≥1 coding solve | Hero quant, zero coding submit |
| Technical (30-45) | Resume depth + OOP/DBMS fundamentals | Tools listed you cannot discuss |
| HR (20-30) | Relocation/shifts/bond honesty + specific Why Infosys | Memorised speeches; higher-studies dodge |
HackWithInfy / InfyTQ paths change the band (DSE/SP). Confirm your offer stream before comparing CTC chatter.
Red flags that kill Infosys offers
- Treating HR as a formality after clearing IRT/technical
- Soft no on relocation that becomes hard no after the letter
- Bond/service-agreement theatrics instead of a calm question
- “Why Infosys?” that only cites brand or package
- Active higher-studies plan hidden until background verification
How to prepare for Infosys interviews
- Loop map: IRT; Technical Interview; HR Interview. Confirm timings from the drive mail.
- Technical depth: Drill the Q&A section until answers are spoken, not read. Know every resume project cold.
- Experiences: Study round-wise notes on the interview experience page - real prompts beat generic lists.
- HR: Three STAR stories + a specific “Why Infosys?” on the HR page.
A practical Infosys prep plan
Use this as a default four-week loop before a Infosys drive. Adjust to your invite timeline.
- Week 1: Timed aptitude + one easy coding problem a day, plus a one-page cs fundamentals sheet. Open the Infosys previous-year sets on this site and mark which sections ate your time. Write the timing on a sticky note. That number is more useful than a 200-problem LeetCode streak you never timed.
- Week 2: Most Infosys drives fail people on the first timed paper or OA. Do three timed sits this week. After each one, log every miss in a two-column note: topic and why (slow, wrong formula, bad edge case, panic). The next sit should only add problems from that log.
- Week 3: Technical interviews at Infosys usually want a clean project story, one or two CS fundamentals, and (if the process has it) a behavioral or values round. Write STAR stories on paper, not in your head. Practise “Why Infosys?” with one concrete product, lab, or business line - not a slogan.
- Week 4: Two full mocks, then only error-log topics - no new patterns. If you still have energy, redo only the questions you failed in week 2.
10-day crash version: Days 1-4 timed DSA, days 5-7 resume projects + CS fundamentals, days 8-9 mock interviews out loud, day 10 HR STAR stories on the HR page.
Compensation notes
Candidate-reported fresher/early-career packages for Infosys often cite SE often ~₹3.6-4.5 LPA chatter; DSE ~₹6.5-9.5; SP/PP ~₹9-12 LPA. Treat forum numbers as ranges, not guarantees - confirm the written offer letter for your team and location.
Sources
Interview process details and sample questions on this site are editorially organized from public candidate reports and hiring write-ups, with round structure, prep notes, and company-specific framing added by our team. For round-by-round stories, see the Infosys interview experience page. For OA papers and coding drills, use Infosys on placementpapers.app. OA quick answers, track-wise questions and the Technology Analyst section draw on FACE Prep’s Infosys test-pattern guides, placementpreparation.io’s Infosys recruitment-process and eligibility pages (2026), PrepInsta’s Infosys off-campus test-pattern page (2026), GeeksforGeeks System Engineer interview experiences and 2025-2026 Glassdoor candidate reviews.