Zerodha runs one of India's largest retail brokerages on a deliberately lean stack, so its system-design rounds prize low latency and correctness over web-scale CRUD.
In 2026 expect problems anchored in real broking constraints: acknowledging a Kite order in single-digit milliseconds during the 9:15 AM open surge, fanning out live market ticks to millions of concurrent users, and reconciling trades with the exchange and depository so no position is ever wrong. Interviewers reward candidates who treat a reconciliation bug as a regulatory event and design for idempotency, audit trails, and clear mismatch handling.
About Zerodha
India's largest stockbroker by active clients; bootstrapped, profitable, anti-VC posture.
Resume shortlist or coding assessment
Technical coding round on DSA and clean implementation
System-design round on a low-latency, correctness-critical service
Founder or senior-engineer round on depth and fundamentals, then offer
Round 1 (60 min)
coding round on data structures, algorithms, and clean code.
Round 2 (60 min)
system design of a low-latency broking service with correctness constraints.
Round 3 (45-60 min)
deep-dive on fundamentals, trade-offs, and reconciliation edge cases.
Sourced from 2+ candidate post-mortems. Hit Practice to answer any one with AI voice feedback.