Interview experience
Urban Company interview experiences covering Online Coding Assessment, LLD Round 1, LLD Round 2, Technical HR. Round-wise notes, common questions, and what candidates report clears each stage.
Urban Company Interview Questions and Answers (2026)
Urban Company, formerly UrbanClap, is a home services marketplace founded in 2014 and headquartered in Gurgaon. Its engineering teams build matching, booking, and partner quality systems for on-demand services. Urban Company recruits campus graduates for backend, mobile, and data engineering roles.
Explore: Interview experience · HR interview questions · Overview · Placement papers · Preparation guide
Overview
Urban Company’s loop is unusually design-heavy for a fresher process - after a genuinely hard coding assessment, both technical interviews are low-level-design rounds rather than a DSA-then-system-design split.
HR interview questions
Urban Company HR interview questions with sample answer frameworks - motivation, relocation, STAR stories, and culture-fit prompts.
Urban Company interview process at a glance
| Round | Duration | What it tests |
|---|---|---|
| Online Coding Assessment | ~90 min | 3 medium-hard DSA problems (need ~2 fully correct) |
| LLD Round 1 | ~60 min | Data-structure-flavoured design (e.g. LRU-cache-style task manager) |
| LLD Round 2 | ~60 min | Marketplace/two-sided design (e.g. Uber Carpool-style system) |
| Technical HR | 30-45 min | Resume questions, motivation, genuineness |
Urban Company online assessment: quick answers
These answers are compiled from public candidate reports and prep guides, not from an official Urban Company notice, and drives differ. The instruction screen of your own test is the final word.
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| How many questions and how long? | 3 coding problems of medium to hard difficulty in about 1.5 hours (campus SDE reports from 2021). An August 2025 Gurgaon campus OA on Glassdoor also had 3 problems: an LCS-style problem, simple array problems and Rotting Oranges. placementpapers.app describes 2-3 problems in 90 minutes. |
| Does it have negative marking? | No public report mentions any. It is a coding test scored on test cases. |
| Is there a sectional cutoff? | No. There are only coding problems, with no separate sections. |
| How much is the cutoff? | Not published. Candidates report that about 2 of 3 problems fully correct is the practical bar; one 2021 campus candidate solved 2 and advanced. Student reports collected by placementpapers.app cite a 7.0 CGPA minimum; no official cutoff is published. |
| Which platform is it on? | HackerEarth in the one 2021 campus report that names a platform; 2025 reports do not name one. |
| What topics should I prepare? | Dynamic programming above all - one selected candidate singled it out - plus medium-hard arrays, strings, trees and graphs. |
| What comes after the OA? | In 2021 campus loops, two LLD interviews, then a managerial or technical HR round. Reports conflict for 2025: an August 2025 campus loop had a coding interview, a wallet system design round and a project round instead. |
Urban Company interview questions by round
Urban Company hires freshers mainly into one SDE track, so this table is by round rather than by role. The questions come from GfG campus SDE interview experiences (2021) and 2023-2026 Glassdoor and LeetCode Discuss reports; they show the level and style, not a fixed list.
| Round | Reported questions and topics |
|---|---|
| LLD 1 (by an SDE-II) | Design a task manager that adds tasks and deletes the least frequent ones, close to an LFU or LRU cache, built with OOP and sets. One other campus loop ran a 1-hour coding round with a simple DP problem instead. |
| LLD 2 (by an engineering manager) | Design an app for driverless cab booking, or an Uber Carpool system: list requirements, the classes with their data members and methods, and how they interact. Working code was not required. |
| Managerial (by the VP of Engineering) | Resume questions on an internship and a computer vision project, then a DSA problem: pairs from two unsorted arrays that sum to X, extended to 3, 4 and 5 arrays and finally generalised to k arrays. |
| Technical HR | Your resume, what you are passionate about and your dreams; candidates were advised to answer genuinely rather than with textbook lines. |
| Recent loops (2023-2026) | A harder variant of Best Time to Buy and Sell Stock and a wallet system design (August 2025 campus); an LLD for a membership system with tiers, renewals, upgrades, expiry and indexing (2026 SDE-1); an LLD for a proctoring system after two hard DSA problems (2023). |
Asked across every round: think aloud, and be ready to defend every line of your resume.
Online Coding Assessment
Roughly 90 minutes for 3 problems at medium-hard difficulty. Candidates describe it as a real bar rather than a screen - you generally need at least 2 problems fully, correctly solved (not just attempted) to move on.
Common questions
- Medium-hard array/string problems under time pressure
- A problem requiring an optimal (not brute-force) solution to pass all test cases
- Edge-case-heavy DSA problems (trees, graphs, or DP depending on the drive)
LLD Round 1 - data structure design
A self-contained object-oriented design problem close to a data-structure exercise. Candidates report being asked to design a task manager that can add tasks and evict the least-frequently-used one - conceptually adjacent to an LRU cache.
Common questions
- Design a task manager supporting add, complete, and evict-least-frequent operations
- Justify your class structure and how you’d extend it (e.g. add priorities)
- Discuss time complexity of your core operations
- Handle edge cases - ties in frequency, empty state, capacity limits
LLD Round 2 - marketplace design
Shifts to Urban Company’s actual two-sided marketplace shape. A reported prompt is designing an “Uber Carpool”-style system - listing requirements, the classes involved, and how they interact, without needing full working code.
Common questions
- Design a carpool/ride- or service-matching system: list requirements and core classes
- How would you match a customer to an available service professional by location and rating
- How do you model booking state - pending, confirmed, cancelled, completed
- What happens when a matched professional cancels or goes unavailable mid-booking
Round-by-round narratives are on the Urban Company interview experience page.
Technical HR round
A lighter closing round focused on your resume and genuine motivation - candidates report interviewers explicitly valuing honest, specific answers over rehearsed or “bookish” ones.
Common questions
- Tell me about yourself and why Urban Company
- Walk me through a project on your resume in your own words
- What are you passionate about outside of work, and why
- Tell me about a time you balanced the needs of two different groups (e.g. customers and service partners)
Sample answer frameworks for each of these are on the Urban Company HR interview questions page.
Urban Company engineering hiring vs service professional onboarding
Many people searching for an “Urban Company interview” are service professionals - beauticians, electricians, cleaners and others - who want to join the platform as partners. Partner onboarding is a separate process run through Urban Company’s partner channels, with its own requirements. It does not use the coding test or LLD rounds on this page.
This page covers corporate engineering hiring (SDE roles), which runs a coding OA, two LLD interviews and a managerial or HR round. If you are a professional looking to work on the platform, use the official partner onboarding route rather than preparing for these rounds.
Why Urban Company leans so hard on LLD
Urban Company is a managed, two-sided marketplace - it matches customers to vetted service professionals by location, ratings, and availability, then standardises pricing, quality, and payments itself rather than leaving that to the two sides. That shape shows up directly in its interviews: instead of one DSA round and one system-design round, both technical interviews are low-level design exercises, and the second one is explicitly framed around matching and allocation (a ride/service-booking-style system) rather than a generic e-commerce or CRUD prompt. Candidates who can reason concretely about state transitions (booking, cancellation, reassignment) tend to do better than those who only know design-pattern names.
Common technical interview questions and answers
Q: How do you design an LRU cache with O(1) get and put?
Combine a hash map with a doubly linked list. The hash map maps key to the list node holding that key’s value, giving O(1) lookup; the doubly linked list keeps nodes in recency order with the most recently used at the head. On get, look the node up and unlink-then-reinsert it at the head. On put, insert at the head, and if size exceeds capacity, remove the tail node and delete its key from the map. Both operations are O(1) because a doubly linked list lets you unlink a known node in constant time without scanning. Java’s LinkedHashMap with accessOrder = true implements exactly this and you can override removeEldestEntry.
Q: How would you design a task manager that evicts the least-frequently-used task?
LFU needs a count per key plus a way to find the minimum count in O(1). Keep three structures: a map from key to value and frequency, a map from frequency to a doubly linked list (or LinkedHashSet) of keys at that frequency, and an integer minFreq. On access, remove the key from its current frequency bucket, increment its count, and append it to the next bucket; if the old bucket was minFreq and is now empty, increment minFreq. On eviction, drop the oldest key in the minFreq bucket, which resolves frequency ties by recency. All operations are O(1). The tie-breaking rule is the part interviewers actually probe, so state it explicitly.
Q: How do you match a customer to a nearby service professional efficiently?
A naive scan computing distance to every professional is O(n) per request and does not scale. Instead index professionals by a spatial key - geohash, S2 cell, or Uber’s H3 hexagons - so a lookup becomes a hash lookup on the customer’s cell plus its ring of neighbours, narrowing to a small candidate set. Then rank that candidate set by a score combining travel time, rating, skill match, and current load, and lock the chosen professional with an atomic compare-and-set so two bookings cannot grab the same slot. Keep availability in an in-memory store like Redis with a TTL so stale professionals fall out automatically.
Q: How would you model booking state transitions in an object-oriented design?
Model Booking with an explicit status enum - PENDING, CONFIRMED, IN_PROGRESS, COMPLETED, CANCELLED - and never let external code set the field directly. Instead expose intent methods such as confirm(), start(), and cancel() that validate the current state before transitioning, throwing on an illegal move like completing a cancelled booking. This is the State pattern: each transition is defined in one place, so adding RESCHEDULED later touches one table of allowed edges rather than scattered if-statements. Persist transitions as an append-only event log so you can audit why a booking ended up where it did, and enforce the transition in the database with a conditional update so concurrent cancel and confirm requests cannot both win.
Q: What is the difference between composition and inheritance in a design round?
Inheritance expresses an is-a relationship and binds the subclass to the parent’s implementation at compile time, so a change to the parent ripples into every subclass - the fragile base class problem. Composition expresses has-a: the class holds a reference to a collaborator behind an interface and delegates to it, which can be swapped at runtime. For a marketplace design, a PricingStrategy or MatchingStrategy injected into a booking service is composition, and it lets you vary pricing per city without a subclass explosion. The usual guidance is to prefer composition and reserve inheritance for genuine substitutable subtypes that satisfy the Liskov Substitution Principle.
Q: Which SOLID principle matters most in an LLD interview, and why?
The Single Responsibility Principle and the Dependency Inversion Principle carry the most weight. SRP means each class has one reason to change - so a Booking class holds booking state while a separate NotificationService sends messages and a separate PaymentProcessor charges the card, which is what interviewers look for when they say your classes should have clean boundaries. DIP means the high-level booking service depends on a PaymentGateway interface, not on a concrete gateway class, so you can add a provider or stub one in tests without touching the service. Naming the principle is worth little on its own; showing the class list that follows from it is what scores.
Q: How do you prevent two customers from booking the same professional slot at once?
This is a lost-update race. The simplest correct fix is an optimistic conditional write: UPDATE slots SET status = 'BOOKED', booking_id = ? WHERE slot_id = ? AND status = 'AVAILABLE', then check the affected-row count - if it is zero, someone else won and you retry with another slot. Alternatively take a pessimistic lock with SELECT ... FOR UPDATE inside a transaction, which is simpler to reason about but holds a row lock and hurts throughput under contention. A unique constraint on (professional_id, start_time) is a good backstop because the database rejects the duplicate even if application logic has a bug. Optimistic control is usually preferred here since actual collisions are rare.
Q: For 3 medium-hard OA problems in 90 minutes, how do you choose an approach under time pressure?
Read all three first and spend about two minutes classifying each by pattern - two pointers or sliding window for contiguous-subarray questions, hash map for frequency or complement lookups, BFS for shortest hops, DP when subproblems overlap. Then start with the one whose pattern you recognise fastest to bank a full solve, since Urban Company reports needing roughly two fully correct, not three partials. Check the input bounds before coding: n up to about 10^5 rules out a quadratic loop and points at O(n log n) or better, while n up to 20 hints that bitmask or exponential search is fine. Write the brute force only if you are stuck with under fifteen minutes left, because partial credit beats an unfinished optimal attempt.
Q: How do you approach a BookMyShow-style LLD prompt?
Start with actors - User, Movie, Show, Screen, Seat, Booking, Payment - and functional requirements: search movies, pick showtime, hold seats, pay, cancel with policy. Non-functional: concurrent seat booking (optimistic lock or hold TTL), read-heavy browse vs write-heavy checkout. List APIs (GET /shows?city=, POST /bookings), then classes with single responsibilities. Off-campus 2025 reports used this exact shape when the OA was replaced by live DSA.
Q: What production topics catch candidates after strong LLD rounds?
Public 2024 off-campus feedback flagged caching (server-side vs client-side, eviction), idempotent payment webhooks, and basic reliability under load after excellent DSA and e-commerce LLD scores. If you can whiteboard cart and checkout, also rehearse cache-aside and what happens when a partner slot is double-booked.
Q: Do off-campus loops always include the 3-problem OA?
No. Referral-driven 2025 reports went straight to a one-hour DSA round (merge intervals + topological sort) plus BookMyShow LLD and HR. Campus drives still describe HackerEarth-style triple tests. Read your invite carefully before practising the wrong format.
Frequently asked questions about Urban Company interviews
Does the Urban Company online assessment have negative marking?
No public report mentions negative marking. The Urban Company OA is a coding test - 3 medium-to-hard problems in about 1.5 hours on HackerEarth - scored on test cases, so a fully correct solution counts far more than a partial one.
How many questions do you need to solve in the Urban Company OA?
About 2 of the 3, fully correct, in candidate reports; the cutoff itself is not published. A November 2021 campus candidate solved 2 of 3 and moved on to the LLD rounds. An August 2025 campus OA also had 3 problems. Student reports collected by placementpapers.app cite a 7.0 CGPA minimum; Urban Company does not publish one.
What is the Urban Company interview process for freshers?
Urban Company’s SDE loop typically runs 4 stages: 1. Online Coding Assessment (~1.5 hours) - 3 problems of medium-hard difficulty; candidates generally need to clear at least 2 fully to advance. 2. Low-Level Design Round 1 (~1 hour) - design an in-memory system (e.g. a task manager that evicts the least-frequently-used task, LRU-cache-adjacent). 3. Low-Level Design Round 2 (~1 hour) - a marketplace-shaped design problem (candidates report an ‘Uber Carpool’-style system: list requirements, classes, and interactions, no working code required). 4. Technical HR round - resume-based questions plus motivation and genuineness checks. Total duration is roughly 2-3 weeks.
What questions are asked in Urban Company interviews?
The OA is 3 medium-hard DSA problems under real time pressure. The two LLD rounds ask you to design working object-oriented systems from scratch - one closer to a data-structure problem (an LRU-cache-style task manager), one closer to Urban Company’s actual marketplace shape (a carpool/ride-matching-style system with customers and providers). The closing round is lighter - resume questions and genuine motivation, not bookish answers.
How many rounds are there in the Urban Company interview?
Urban Company typically runs 4 stages: an online coding assessment, two low-level-design interviews, and a technical HR round. Some drives merge or skip a round depending on team and hiring cycle - confirm the exact structure with your recruiter.
How should I prepare for Urban Company interviews?
Practice medium-hard DSA under time pressure (you need at least 2 of 3 OA problems fully correct to advance). For the LLD rounds, practice designing systems with clean class boundaries end-to-end - not just naming patterns, but actually listing classes, their responsibilities, and interactions - for both a data-structure-flavoured problem (LRU-style eviction) and a marketplace-flavoured one (two-sided matching, like a carpool or booking system).
Why does Urban Company ask marketplace/two-sided design questions?
Because Urban Company’s product is a two-sided, managed marketplace - matching customers to service professionals by location, ratings, and availability, then standardising quality, pricing, and payments in between. Design prompts like an Uber-Carpool-style system test whether you can reason about matching, allocation, and state (bookings, cancellations, availability) rather than a generic single-sided CRUD app.
How hard is Urban Company’s online assessment?
Candidates describe it as genuinely hard - 3 medium-hard problems in about 1.5 hours, with roughly 2 needing to be fully correct (not just attempted) to advance to interviews. Treat it like a competitive-programming round, not a warm-up screen.
How to prepare for Urban Company interviews
- Loop map: Online Coding Assessment; LLD Round 1; LLD Round 2; Technical HR. 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 Urban Company?” on the HR page.
Who usually fits and who struggles
Good fit: You like timed coding, you will talk through a matching system, and you can live with Gurgaon/hybrid as named.
Harder path: You only read system-design blogs and skip OA; you freeze until you know “the” class diagram; you quote Amazon 35 LPA in HR; you cannot explain a no-show partner.
A practical Urban Company prep plan
Use this as a default four-week loop before a Urban Company drive. Adjust to your invite timeline.
- Week 1: Oa pattern first: sit one untimed paper, then redo it under the real clock. Open the Urban Company 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 Urban Company 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 Urban Company 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 Urban Company?” with one concrete product, lab, or business line - not a slogan.
- Week 4: Star stories + one project walkthrough recorded on your phone. 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 Urban Company often cite ₹18-25 LPA SWE band (confirm letter). 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 Urban Company interview experience page. For OA papers and coding drills, use Urban Company on placementpapers.app. OA quick answers and round-wise questions draw on two GfG Urban Company on-campus SDE interview experiences (2021), placementpapers.app’s Urban Company interview experience page, and 2023-2026 Glassdoor reviews and a 2026 LeetCode Discuss SDE-1 report seen through search snippets.