10 Oracle Software Engineer (New Grad) Interview Questions (2026)

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STAR: choose a specific tech (a framework, a language, a domain). Show your learning process — docs, prototypes, mentors. Tie to a concrete outcome. Oracle interviewers appreciate methodical, depth-first learners over surface-level skimmers.

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Tie to a specific product line — OCI, database internals, Java platform, MySQL, NetSuite, etc. Show you understand Oracle's customer base (banks, governments, large enterprises) and how reliability and backwards-compatibility shape engineering decisions. Avoid 'I want to work in cloud' alone.

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Pick a feedback story where you actually changed behavior. Show emotional regulation — initial reaction, reflection, then a concrete action. Avoid 'I didn't agree but I went along with it.' End with what you learned and how it shows up in your work today.

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Min-heap of size k: iterate the array, push to heap, pop when size exceeds k. The root is the kth largest. O(n log k) time, O(k) space. Mention quickselect for an average O(n) alternative — interviewers like to see you know both.

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Three pointers, fill from the end of the first array backwards. This avoids overwriting unprocessed elements. O(m+n) time, O(1) space. Be precise about edge cases: one array empty, equal values, the first array's pre-allocated buffer.

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Hash map + doubly linked list. Map keys to list nodes; on access, move node to head; on insert beyond capacity, evict tail. O(1) for both operations. Walk through the node-pointer updates carefully — this is where candidates lose time.

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Stack: push opening brackets; on closing, pop and check match. Empty stack at end = valid. O(n) time, O(n) space. Cover the three bracket types (), [], {}. Edge case: empty string is valid; single closing bracket is invalid.

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Multiple correct answers: (1) SELECT MAX(salary) FROM employees WHERE salary < (SELECT MAX(salary) FROM employees); (2) ORDER BY DESC LIMIT 1 OFFSET 1; (3) window function with DENSE_RANK(). Discuss tradeoffs — NULL handling when there is no second salary, duplicates, and index usage.

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INNER returns only matching rows from both tables. LEFT returns all rows from left + matches from right (right side null when no match). FULL OUTER returns all rows from both, with nulls where the other side has no match. Be ready with an example query for each.

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Indexes speed up reads at the cost of slower writes (insert, update, delete) and storage. Skip indexes on: very small tables, columns with low cardinality (e.g. boolean), columns rarely queried, and write-heavy tables where read patterns vary. Mention B-tree as the default structure.