Visa interview guide¶
Global card payments network. Known for a timed CodeSignal or HackerRank OA, two DSA-plus-resume technical rounds, and a hiring manager round. Updated October 2026.
| Visa at a glance | |
|---|---|
| Category | Big Tech |
| Intern level | Software Engineer Intern (US summer; India 2-month campus summer internship; UK 'Software Engineer Placement Year' in Belfast posted Sep 2026) |
| New grad level | L3 Associate Software Engineer per Levels.fyi (US); India campus title Software Engineer / SDE 1 |
| 0 to 3 years | Software Engineer (L4 on Levels.fyi; India drives target '6 to 18 months' and '0.5 to 1.5 years' experience); Senior Software Engineer (L5) is reachable around 3 yrs in India (an engineer with 2.8 yrs got SSE in Mar 2026) |
| Online assessment | CodeSignal (GCA-style, 2025 and still reported Aug 2026) and HackerRank tiered assessments (Coding Intermediate / Advanced / Expert, reported from Feb 2026) : CodeSignal: 4 questions, 70 min (90 in one May 2025 drive), max 600 points. HackerRank Coding Expert: 3 questions, 90 min. New grad Sep 2026: 3 questions. Staff HackerRank: 2 questions, 90 min |
| Coding rounds | 2 technical rounds with 1 to 2 problems each, plus coding in the OA |
| Behavioral | Visa Leadership Principles: Lead courageously, Obsess about customers, Collaborate as one Visa, Execute with excellence |
| Timeline | Reported: OA feedback in days; full loop 2 to 7 weeks (one Dec 16, 2025 application reached an offer Feb 4, 2026 after a team re-route); HR asked for about 2 weeks after the HM round (Aug 2026); offers follow document checks, and a Jul 2026 Bengaluru hire had reference checks with their current manager and coworkers before the formal offer letter. Campus drives: OA Aug to Oct, decision next day after the interview. |
| New grad pay | Levels.fyi (Oct 4, 2026): L3 Associate Software Engineer average total comp $128K (median $126K, n=17; average base $114K, stock $6.5K/yr, bonus $7.6K); L4 Software Engineer average $121K (median $122K, n=40); L5 Senior average $158K (median $159K). RSUs vest over 3 yrs (20/20/60 in a Feb 2026 India offer). Intern (Levels.fyi Summer 2026, US): $39 to $52/hr (Highlands Ranch to NYC; Foster City $45/hr). India: campus summer intern stipend 90K INR/month plus 1L relocation (Oct 2025); Software Engineer with 10 months exp (Feb 2026) 17 LPA base, 10% bonus, $18K RSUs vesting 20/20/60; SSE with 2.8 yrs (Mar 2026) about 33 LPA base, about 44 LPA CTC. |
| Official links | Careers, Students, Values |
Interview process¶
New grad¶
- Application. Jobs live on Workday: corporate.visa.com/en/jobs 301-redirects to visa.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/Visa, and early careers roles sit on the Visa_Early_Careers Workday site (only 2 software roles listed there on Oct 4, 2026, one being the Belfast placement year). The early careers page lists Sep 2026 campus events (Texas A&M, UT Austin, Harvard, MIT HackMIT, UC Berkeley, Georgia Tech HackGT, UC San Diego). Official fraud warning on the careers page: Visa Talent Acquisition only contacts you from @visa.com addresses and 'will never ask you for any payment'.
- Online assessment. CodeSignal through 2025 and still reported in Aug 2026 (SE I): 4 questions in 70 min, scored out of 600 (typically 2 easy array/string, 1 implementation-heavy, 1 medium-hard). US SDE1 OA (Nov 2025) was proctored with webcam, microphone, and screen share. From Feb 2026, HackerRank tier names appear (Coding Intermediate for new grad and intern, Advanced, Expert; Expert = 3 questions in 90 min). A Sep 2026 new grad OA had 3 questions (2 basic, 1 intermediate). Check your invite for the platform.
- US new grad pre-screen. Sep 2025 report for New Grad (WA, CA): 4 questions (reverse strings by length parity, recipe pattern matching, reactor queue simulation with a 10-slot cooling chamber, a graph problem).
- Technical round 1. 45 to 60 min. Resume and project deep dive (why this tech, alternatives, trade-offs) plus 1 to 2 DSA problems (arrays, strings, binary search, graphs). One Feb 2026 candidate (location not stated) was told 45 min = 30 min technical + 15 min behavioral.
- Technical round 2. DSA (DP such as Word Break or House Robber, graphs such as Number of Islands, binary search on answer) plus design concepts; Jan to Feb 2026 rounds added GenAI discussion. Java roles get core Java and Spring Boot questions (DI, bean scopes, HashMap internals).
- Hiring manager round. Behavioral plus past-work architecture; sometimes light system design drawn on Excalidraw. Feedback often next day to 2 weeks; offer after documents and references.
Intern¶
- India campus OA. CodeSignal, 4 questions, 70 min, can be taken from home; questions at most LeetCode medium using arrays, strings, maps (Oct 2025). Another campus OA for the 2-month SDE intern (Aug 2025): 2 easy, 1 medium, 1 hard (neighbor sum, two sorted arrays timing, center-aligned text justification, subarrays with at least k distinct).
- Shortlist. About 11 of about 500 students shortlisted in one Oct 2025 campus drive; the OA is the main filter.
- Interview. One 57-min online interview: project and tech stack deep dive, HR questions, and an easy DSA problem (count repeated words with a hash map). 9 of 11 selected, result next day.
- Off-campus / US intern. Off-campus Summer 2026 OA on CodeSignal (Dec 2025 to Jan 2026, 4 problems); a candidate with 600/600 had no interview a month later (Nov 2025). US 'Software Dev Intern' candidates reported a HackerRank Coding Intermediate OA in Feb 2026. US intern interview rounds are not well documented.
With 1 to 3 years of experience¶
For 1 to 3 yrs (Software Engineer or early SSE), India loops run OA + 2 technical + HM; a May 2025 off-campus SDE1 process (6 to 18 months experience) ran all three interviews in person on one day (city not stated). Expect deeper project grilling, Java/Spring Boot internals (HashMap and ConcurrentHashMap internals came up in an Aug 2026 SE I round), SQL, and a design round (rate limiter, inventory service schema, payment states and retries; distributed scheduler at Staff). Some candidates were re-routed between teams mid-process (performance engineering to development, Jan 2026) and re-interviewed. Senior OA (Apr 2026): 4 easy to medium questions, platform not named; Staff OA on HackerRank: 2 medium to hard in 90 min (Jul 2026).
Online assessment¶
- Platform: CodeSignal (GCA-style, 2025 and still reported Aug 2026) and HackerRank tiered assessments (Coding Intermediate / Advanced / Expert, reported from Feb 2026)
- Format: CodeSignal: 4 questions, 70 min (90 in one May 2025 drive), max 600 points. HackerRank Coding Expert: 3 questions, 90 min. New grad Sep 2026: 3 questions. Staff HackerRank: 2 questions, 90 min
- Notes: Score cut-offs are unpublished: 567/600 was rejected (Dec 2025) and 600/600 did not guarantee an interview (Nov to Dec 2025). Early questions are simulation and string tasks; the last one usually needs an efficient algorithm (binary search, sorted set, heap).
Prepare with How to pass an OA and compare formats in OA formats by company.
Coding rounds¶
- Rounds: 2 technical rounds with 1 to 2 problems each, plus coding in the OA
- Style: LeetCode easy to medium, occasional hard (Trapping Rain Water, Sliding Window Maximum); DP, graphs, binary search, strings, hash maps; India rounds mix in CS fundamentals and SQL
- Environment: Virtual (video call with shared editor) or in-person at India hiring drives; Excalidraw used for architecture in HM rounds
- Graded on: Optimal complexity (a 3Sum candidate was rejected for O(n^2 + n log n) when O(n^2) was expected), clean code, explaining choices while coding, edge cases
- Reported focus topics: Arrays, strings, hash maps, simulation (OA), Binary search on answer, Dynamic programming (Word Break, House Robber), Graphs (islands, cycles, ordering), Sliding window, Sorted sets and heaps, LRU cache, Java core and Spring Boot, SQL, Rate limiting and log processing at scale
Run every practice problem through the 45-minute framework and the code quality rubric.
What they ask (data)¶
Based on 30 distinct problems tagged to Visa in the last 6 months (3 in the last 30 days, 13 in the last 3 months, 147 all-time) across two open datasets of LeetCode company tags. Tags are user-reported, so treat frequency as a signal, not a promise.
Difficulty mix (last 6 months): Medium 83%, Hard 10%, Easy 7%
Most tagged topics (share of problems): Array 70%, Hash Table 33%, String 33%, Dynamic Programming 33%, Sorting 27%, Greedy 20%, Two Pointers 17%, Stack 10%, Prefix Sum 10%, Binary Search 10%
Most frequent problems¶
Ranked by frequency, weighted toward the last 30 days. Classics like Two Sum sit near the top of almost every company's list because users tag them everywhere. Solve those fast. The signature list below is more specific to this company.
| # | Problem | Difficulty | Last seen | Topics |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Exclusive Time of Functions | Medium | 30 days | Array, Stack |
| 2 | Longest Substring Without Repeating Characters | Medium | 30 days | Hash Table, String, Sliding Window |
| 3 | Count Ways To Build Good Strings | Medium | 30 days | Dynamic Programming |
| 4 | Beautiful Arrangement | Medium | 3 months | Array, Dynamic Programming, Backtracking, Bit Manipulation |
| 5 | Count Palindromic Subsequences | Hard | 3 months | String, Dynamic Programming |
| 6 | Number of Divisible Triplet Sums | Medium | 3 months | Array, Hash Table |
| 7 | Minimum Number of Swaps to Make the String Balanced | Medium | 3 months | Two Pointers, String, Stack, Greedy |
| 8 | Merge Intervals | Medium | 3 months | Array, Sorting, Quicksort |
| 9 | Maximum OR | Medium | 3 months | Array, Greedy, Bit Manipulation, Prefix Sum |
| 10 | Longest Palindromic Substring | Medium | 3 months | Two Pointers, String, Dynamic Programming, Manacher |
| 11 | Divide Players Into Teams of Equal Skill | Medium | 3 months | Array, Hash Table, Two Pointers, Sorting |
| 12 | Subarray Sum Equals K | Medium | 3 months | Array, Hash Table, Prefix Sum |
| 13 | Minimize Maximum of Array | Medium | 3 months | Array, Binary Search, Dynamic Programming, Greedy |
| 14 | Find the Length of the Longest Common Prefix | Medium | 6 months | Array, Hash Table, String, Trie |
| 15 | Two Sum | Easy | 6 months | Array, Hash Table |
| 16 | Best Time to Buy and Sell Stock | Easy | 6 months | Array, Dynamic Programming |
| 17 | Number of Islands | Medium | 6 months | Array, Depth-First Search, Breadth-First Search, Union-Find |
| 18 | 3Sum | Medium | 6 months | Array, Two Pointers, Sorting |
| 19 | Number of Perfect Pairs | Medium | 6 months | Array, Math, Two Pointers, Sorting |
| 20 | LRU Cache | Medium | 6 months | Hash Table, Linked List, Design, Doubly-Linked List |
| 21 | Group Anagrams | Medium | 6 months | Array, Hash Table, String, Sorting |
| 22 | Minimum Cost Path with Teleportations | Hard | 6 months | Array, Dynamic Programming, Matrix |
| 23 | Sell Diminishing-Valued Colored Balls | Medium | 6 months | Array, Math, Binary Search, Greedy |
| 24 | Longest Valid Parentheses | Hard | 6 months | String, Dynamic Programming, Stack, Bracket Sequences |
| 25 | Top K Frequent Elements | Medium | 6 months | Array, Hash Table, Divide and Conquer, Sorting |
| 26 | Palindrome Partitioning | Medium | 6 months | String, Dynamic Programming, Backtracking |
| 27 | Maximum Palindromes After Operations | Medium | 6 months | Array, Hash Table, String, Greedy |
| 28 | Longest Non-decreasing Subarray From Two Arrays | Medium | 6 months | Array, Dynamic Programming |
| 29 | Minimum Suffix Flips | Medium | 6 months | String, Greedy |
| 30 | Path With Minimum Effort | Medium | 6 months | Array, Binary Search, Depth-First Search, Breadth-First Search |
Signature problems¶
Problems where Visa accounts for a large share of all recent tags across companies. These are the most Visa-specific questions in the data.
| # | Problem | Difficulty | Last seen | Topics |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Exclusive Time of Functions | Medium | 30 days | Array, Stack |
| 2 | Count Ways To Build Good Strings | Medium | 30 days | Dynamic Programming |
| 3 | Number of Divisible Triplet Sums | Medium | 3 months | Array, Hash Table |
| 4 | Beautiful Arrangement | Medium | 3 months | Array, Dynamic Programming, Backtracking, Bit Manipulation |
| 5 | Count Palindromic Subsequences | Hard | 3 months | String, Dynamic Programming |
| 6 | Minimum Number of Swaps to Make the String Balanced | Medium | 3 months | Two Pointers, String, Stack, Greedy |
| 7 | Divide Players Into Teams of Equal Skill | Medium | 3 months | Array, Hash Table, Two Pointers, Sorting |
| 8 | Maximum OR | Medium | 3 months | Array, Greedy, Bit Manipulation, Prefix Sum |
| 9 | Minimize Maximum of Array | Medium | 3 months | Array, Binary Search, Dynamic Programming, Greedy |
| 10 | Number of Perfect Pairs | Medium | 6 months | Array, Math, Two Pointers, Sorting |
| 11 | Minimum Cost Path with Teleportations | Hard | 6 months | Array, Dynamic Programming, Matrix |
| 12 | Longest Non-decreasing Subarray From Two Arrays | Medium | 6 months | Array, Dynamic Programming |
| 13 | Minimum Suffix Flips | Medium | 6 months | String, Greedy |
Reported in 2025 to 2026 interviews¶
Questions candidates said they got, each linked to the post where it was reported.
| Question | Role | When | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Minimum Number of Refueling Stops (CodeSignal OA, proctored) | SDE1 (US) | 2025-11 | post |
| LRU Cache style design (CodeSignal OA) | SDE1 (US) | 2025-11 | post |
| Find the Length of the Longest Common Prefix (CodeSignal OA) | SDE1 (US) | 2025-11 | post |
| Hiker sees hills at least x indices ahead: minimum height difference (sorted set) | SDE1 OA; also Sr SWE OA Apr 2026 | 2025-11 | post |
| Minimum k to sort a permutation by moving the top k cards to the bottom once | OA | 2025-10 | post |
| New grad pre-screen: reverse strings by parity, recipe pattern matching, reactor queue with capacity 10, graph problem | New Grad (US, WA/CA) | 2025-09 | post |
| Text justification with center alignment (OA) | 2-month SDE Intern (India campus) | 2025-08 | post |
| CodeSignal set: growing colors in a matrix, grades from marks, e-scooter distance on a line, L/C state flips | Software Engineer (Bangalore) | 2025-11 | post |
| Search in Rotated Sorted Array | Software Engineer (10 months exp) | 2025-12 | post |
| Word Break | Software Engineer (10 months exp) | 2026-01 | post |
| Number of Islands, plus GenAI and system design basics | Software Engineer (10 months exp) | 2026-01 | post |
| Max non-adjacent coin collection, follow-up on a circle | Software Engineer (10 months exp) | 2026-02 | post |
| Rate-limit IPs making more than x requests in a 10-min window from a log file; follow-up: logs are GBs (external sort) | Software Engineer (10 months exp, Bangalore) | 2025-06 | post |
| Aggressive cows variant (binary search on the answer) | Software Engineer (10 months exp, Bangalore) | 2025-06 | post |
| Order city pairs into one trip and find the start city | SE-1 (1y10m) | 2025-05 | post |
| Trapping Rain Water (as sand and mountains), then Sliding Window Maximum | Software Engineer | 2025-03 | post |
| Count repeated words in a text (hash map) | Summer Intern (India campus) | 2025-10 | post |
| 3Sum (O(n^2) expected) plus SQL: count per department with GROUP BY/HAVING, find duplicate rows | SDE 1 (1.10 YOE) | 2025-06 | post |
| Design a rate limiter (HLD), after Java/Spring Boot internals and LRU cache implementation | Senior SWE | 2026-04 | post |
| Count palindromic subsequences variant on a binary string (HackerRank Coding Expert OA) | Software Engineer | 2026-02 | post |
| Longest Increasing Path in a Matrix (write your own main and tests), then Java basics | Software Engineer | 2026-09 | post |
| Design an inventory service: SQL table design, then what analytics you could run on it | Software Engineer | 2026-09 | post |
| OA: shortest prefix of a digit string whose characters can build every permutation of each target string | New Grad Software Engineer | 2026-09 | post |
| Number of Islands with DFS then BFS and a comparison, plus HashMap internals, thread safety, and ConcurrentHashMap | Software Engineer I | 2026-08 | post |
| System design: payment system with payment state changes, multiple payment methods, durable execution and retries | Software Engineer (Bengaluru) | 2026-07 | post |
Beyond LeetCode¶
Java and Spring Boot fundamentals (annotations, DI, prototype vs singleton beans, JPA, transaction isolation), SQL queries (GROUP BY/HAVING, duplicates), performance engineering discussion for perf roles, GenAI discussion (2026). No take-home reported.
System design¶
Interns and new grads: none formally; project architecture questions instead. 1 to 3 yrs: HLD in a technical or HM round (rate limiter, log-based IP rate limiting at scale, API and DB trade-offs). Staff: distributed scheduler design plus cache-latency and feature-flag scenarios (Mar 2026).
Start with who needs system design, then the framework.
Behavioral¶
Framework: Visa Leadership Principles: Lead courageously, Obsess about customers, Collaborate as one Visa, Execute with excellence (official page)
What they look for:
- Ownership and accountability ('act like an owner')
- Customer focus
- Collaboration across teams ('Collaborate as one Visa' appeared in an SDE-1 interview agenda)
- Execution speed and learning from setbacks
- Motivation to join Visa and fit with the team
Questions to prepare:
- Tell me about a challenging situation and how you handled it.
- How do you handle disagreements or different technical approaches on a team?
- Tell me about something you owned end to end.
- What was your most difficult project, and how did you handle production issues?
- Why Visa, and how do you align with its values?
Build your answers with the story bank. Company detail: behavioral guide.
Tips¶
- Finish the 2 easy OA questions in about 15 to 20 minutes; the 70-min CodeSignal format leaves little time for the implementation-heavy and hard ones.
- Aim for a near-perfect OA score: 567/600 was rejected in Dec 2025, and even 600/600 did not guarantee an interview.
- Expect a proctored OA in the US (webcam, microphone, screen share); set up a clean desk and test your camera first.
- Know every resume project in depth; India technical rounds spend 30 to 40 minutes on architecture and 'why this tool' questions.
- For Java roles, revise Spring Boot (DI, bean scopes, annotations), HashMap internals, and SQL GROUP BY/HAVING; these come up for 0 to 2 YOE.
- Prepare a few GenAI talking points (where you used it, limits); several Jan to Feb 2026 rounds included GenAI discussion.
- Map 1 or 2 stories to each Visa Leadership Principle (Lead courageously, Obsess about customers, Collaborate as one Visa, Execute with excellence); a Sr SWE was rejected after an unprepared HM round (Apr 2026).
- Apply through Visa's Workday sites only and ignore anyone asking for payment; Visa recruiters write only from @visa.com addresses.
4-week plan for Visa¶
Do this after you finish a core list like Grind 75 or NeetCode 150.
- Week 1: Solve problems 1 to 20 from the most frequent list. Time-box each at 30 minutes.
- Week 2: Solve problems 21 to 40. Re-solve any you failed in week 1 without looking.
- Week 3: Solve the signature problems and every reported question above. Do 2 timed mock interviews.
- Week 4: Write 8 stories for the Visa Leadership Principles: Lead courageously, Obsess about customers, Collaborate as one Visa, Execute with excellence round. Do 2 full mock loops. Review the online assessment and system design notes above.
Sources¶
- Question data: liquidslr/leetcode-company-wise-problems and snehasishroy/leetcode-companywise-interview-questions, merged and ranked by scripts/build_question_data.py.
- https://corporate.visa.com/en/careers.html
- https://corporate.visa.com/en/careers/early-careers.html
- https://corporate.visa.com/en/about-visa/leadership-principles.html
- https://visa.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/Visa
- https://visa.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/Visa_Early_Careers
- https://www.levels.fyi/companies/visa/salaries/software-engineer
- https://www.levels.fyi/internships/Visa/Software-Engineer-Intern/
- https://leetcode.com/discuss/post/7360983/visa-oa-sde1-by-anonymous_user-e1t3/
- https://leetcode.com/discuss/post/7382120/visa-oa-sde1-question-by-anonymous_user-iyvw/
- https://leetcode.com/discuss/post/7765688/visa-interview-sr-swe-by-anonymous_user-kmls/
- https://leetcode.com/discuss/post/7308784/visa-oa-question-array-by-anonymous_user-zbxs/
- https://leetcode.com/discuss/post/7232120/visa-oa-pre-screen-for-new-grad-waca-usa-mpf8/
- https://leetcode.com/discuss/post/7131555/visa-oa-2-month-sde-intern-by-ishan1o1-y3q9/
- https://leetcode.com/discuss/post/7335145/my-visa-codesignal-experience-bangalore-y5xe0/
- https://leetcode.com/discuss/post/7333944/visa-oa-codesignal-experience-by-anonymo-pcna/
- https://leetcode.com/discuss/post/7354481/visa-codesignal-17112025-failed-by-node-pndhb/
- https://leetcode.com/discuss/post/7403009/visa-oa-cutoff-score-rejected-by-prudhvi-cy5e/
- https://leetcode.com/discuss/post/7325429/visa-sde-intern-by-8zjwftwbnt-3j20/
- https://leetcode.com/discuss/post/7462795/regarding-visa-oa-for-summer-internship-wx62h/
- https://leetcode.com/discuss/post/7561130/visa-oa-coding-expert-by-anonymous_user-pvbu/
- https://leetcode.com/discuss/post/7563953/visa-hackerrank-oa-coding-advanced-by-si-fpse/
- https://leetcode.com/discuss/post/7575130/anyone-taken-visa-hackerrank-intermediat-0xp8/
- https://leetcode.com/discuss/post/7607289/visa-hackerrank-oa-sofware-dev-intern-by-cglf/
- https://leetcode.com/discuss/post/8404717/visa-oa-staff-software-engineer-rejected-c0gg/
- https://leetcode.com/discuss/post/7550973/visa-swe-interview-by-sudish30-a9uf/
Watch out: Most 2025 to 2026 reports are India (Bangalore) 0 to 3 YOE and campus interns; US new grad and US intern interview loops are thin (one US new grad OA pre-screen, one US SDE1 OA). OA platform is mixed: CodeSignal dominated 2025 and still appears in Aug 2026 reports, while HackerRank tiered assessments appear from Feb 2026; tell readers to check the invite. No official Visa interview prep page exists; the early careers page has 3 generic tip blocks (learn what Visa does, explore what it stands for, resume and virtual interview tips). Levels.fyi shows L4 median below L3 (small samples), so treat level comp as rough. Changed recently: Visa's job board moved to Workday (corporate.visa.com/en/jobs now redirects there), so Jugal's Sep 2025 Substack line listing Visa under SmartRecruiters (https://jugaldb.substack.com/p/stop-applying-to-ghost-jobs) is out of date. PracHub posts are candidate-submitted and 'curated and edited by PracHub'; entries marked 'Reported Jul 2026' carry little detail. Two LeetCode posts (8400456, 8406638) only link to an external blog and were not used. Glassdoor and Reddit could not be fetched. Category could also be read as fintech.
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