Skill guide

Java

Java remains dominant at large enterprises and many campus-hiring pipelines: it's the expected language in many new-grad SDE loops.

Skill levels

beginner

  • Classes, objects, basic OOP
  • Collections (ArrayList, HashMap)
  • Exception handling

intermediate

  • Interfaces vs abstract classes
  • Generics
  • Streams API basics

Job-ready

  • Multithreading basics (Thread, synchronized)
  • JVM memory model at a high level
  • Writing testable, decoupled classes

How to prove it

  • A completed assessment
  • A backend project using Spring or plain Java
  • Solved and explained 15+ DSA problems in Java

Common interview questions

Mentor opinion
  • Explain the difference between == and .equals().
  • What happens during garbage collection, at a high level?
  • When would you use an interface vs an abstract class?