Apna Team Lead Interview Experience

I recently appeared for the Team Lead interview at Apna and the process was quite extensive, testing both my low-level design (LLD), high-level design (HLD), project knowledge and behavioral skills.
Here’s a detailed breakdown of my interview journey:

Round 1 – Low-Level Design (LLD)

Topic: BookMyShow System Design

The interviewer asked me to design the complete flow of BookMyShow. The discussion covered:

• Database Schema – designing tables for users, movies, theaters, seats, bookings, etc.
• API Blueprint – I had to list all possible APIs, including:
  • Recommendation API (GET) – called when a user first opens the app
  • Search API (GET) – when a user searches for a city or movie
  • Booking API (POST) – for selecting seats and booking tickets
  • Payment API (POST) – to handle payment confirmation
  • Booking Status API (GET) – to check ticket confirmation details

For each API, I was expected to write the HTTP method, request payload, and response payload.

Key Follow-Up Question:
How do you handle the scenario where multiple users try to book the same seat at the same time?

• We discussed concurrency handling using:
  • Transactions
  • Database locks
  • Redis for distributed locking
• The interviewer went deep into Redis usage.

Round 2 – High-Level Design (HLD)

Topic: Design a LeetCode-like Platform with Leaderboard

This round focused on scalability and system design concepts. The interviewer asked me to:

• Design a coding practice platform similar to LeetCode.
• Add leaderboard features to rank users.
• Explain components like:
  • API Gateway
  • Database schema
  • Caching strategy
  • Load balancing
  • Ranking algorithm

Since I had already read similar design breakdowns from HelloInterview’s LeetCode system design article and Alex Xu's System Design Interview Vol.2 (Leaderboard problem), many follow-up questions were familiar and manageable.

Round 3 – HLD + Project Discussion

Topics: Subscription-Based Service + Past Project Work

In this round, the interviewer wanted a deep dive into system design plus my previous work experience.

Subscription Service Design

The company offers three plans:

• Weekly Plan: 60 minutes of content OR 1 week expiry (whichever comes first).
• Monthly Plan: Unlimited content but max 10 interviews per day.
• Quarterly Plan: Same as monthly, valid for 3 months.

I was asked to focus on:

• Database schema – user plans, usage tracking, expiry logic.
• Payment handling – integration with payment gateways, retries, transactions.
• Plan expiration logic – based on time or usage limits.

Project Deep Dive

• Questions on system design decisions I had taken in my previous organization.
• Focus on challenges, trade-offs and scalability.

Round 4 – Behavioral Interview

The final round was a behavioral discussion. Some of the standard questions included:

• Tell me about yourself and your journey so far.
• Challenges faced in past projects and how I solved them.
• How do you handle conflicts in a team?
• Why Apna, and what motivates you to join?
• Where do you see yourself in 3–5 years?

This round mainly tested communication skills, cultural fit and problem-solving mindset.

My Insights

• Be thorough with LLD and HLD concepts – from designing schemas to explaining APIs.
• Practice system design problems like BookMyShow, LeetCode platform and subscription services.
• Be ready to discuss concurrency handling and tools like Redis.
• Revise core CS fundamentals (databases, caching, scalability patterns).
• Prepare for behavioral questions – they carry more weight than most candidates assume.