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Transition to Back-end Developer roles at Tier-1 companies

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Designed and taught by FAANG+ Back-end Engineers to help you transform your career and land your dream job.

Backend Engineers!
Get interview-ready with lessons from FAANG+ engineers
Master core Back-end interview concepts
Sharpen your coding and system design interview skills
Backend Engineering Program
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Back-End Developer Course Curriculum

PART 1: Mastering Backend Development

Introduction to Java Programming
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3 weeks
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5 live classes
1

Variables & Data Types

2

JVM

3

Methods

4

Constructors

5

Control Flow 

6

OOP Principles — Abstraction, Inheritance, Encapsulation, Polymorphism

Developer Essentials
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5 weeks
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3 live classes
1

Scripting

2

Version Control (Git & Github)

3

HTTP & REST APIs

4

Databases & SQL 

5

Client Service Architecture

6

SDLC

7

Networks

Basic Data Structures and Algorithms
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3 weeks
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5 live classes
1

Asymptotic Analysis — Time and Space Complexity

2

Basic Math

3

Bit Manipulation

4

Hashing

5

Search

6

Maps

7

Java Libraries

8

Pointers

Server-Side Programming With Java Spring
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11 weeks
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3 live classes
1

Spring Architecture

2

IDE

3

Maven

4

Spring Boot

5

Spring MVC

6

Spring AOP 

7

Dependency Injection

8

JDBC, Hibernate

9

Mini Project (CRUD App With Spring Boot)

Advanced Back-end Concepts
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5 weeks
1

Caching

2

Messaging (Kafka)

3

Concurrency

4

CI/CD 

5

Spring Security

6

Microservices, Cloud-Native Design

7

Deployment

8

Mini Project

Capstone Project
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2 weeks
1

Industry-relevant projects, replicating real-life projects at Tier-1 companies

PART 2: Interview Prep

Data Structures and Algorithms Interview Prep
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11 weeks
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5 live classes
1

Sorting Algorithms

2

Binary Search

3

Arrays: Prefix Sum, Sliding Windows 

4

Linked List

5

Recursion & Backtracking

6

Stacks and Queues

7

Trees

8

Graphs

9

Greedy Algorithms

10

Dynamic Programming

Software System Design Interview Preparation
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5 weeks
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5 live classes
1

Online Processing Systems

2

Batch Processing Systems

3

Stream Processing Systems

4

Object Modeling

5

API Design

Career & Behavioral Sessions
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3 weeks
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5 live classes
1

Interview Strategy and Success

2

Behavioral Interview Prep

3

Offers and Negotiation

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Best suited for
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People in different domains, who want to learn programming languages and concepts from scratch to pursue a career in Back-end Engineering
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Recent college graduates or final year students aiming to build a career in Back-end Engineering

Why choose this course?

Comprehensive Curriculum

Program designed by FAANG+ leads

360° course designed and taught by FAANG+ experts to help you become a Back-end Engineer
Rigorous Mock Interviews

Individualized teaching and 1:1 help

Technical coaching, homework assistance, solutions discussion, and individual session
Plenty of 1 x 1 Help

Capstone project

Exposure to real-life back-end projects
Career Skills Development

Interview prep modules

Dedicated interview prep classes focused on helping you get 100% interview-ready
Salary Negotiation

Mock interviews with Silicon Valley Engineers

Live interview practice in real-life simulated environments with FAANG and top-tier interviewers
Salary Negotiation

Career skills development

Resume building, LinkedIn profile optimization, personal branding, and live behavioral workshops

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Meet your instructors

Our highly experienced instructors are active engineers and hiring managers at FAANG+ companies and know exactly what it takes to ace tech interviews.

Nikhil Jain

Software Engineer
7+ years experience
FAANG Company
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Patrick Korianski

Software Engineer
6+ years experience
FAANG Company
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Jonathan Carothers

Senior Software Engineer
15+ years experience
FAANG Company
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Built for working professionals

The program schedule is designed to fit into your work and life schedule, with live classes on weekends and coaching sessions in the evenings.

Sunday

4-hour Live Classes in the morning

Thursday

2-hour session in the evening to discuss assignments and problem solutions

Once a week

1-hour technical coaching session to discuss any additional doubts
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Practice and track progress on UpLevel

UpLevel will be your all-in-one learning platform to get you FAANG-ready, with 10,000+ interview questions, timed tests, videos, mock interviews suite, and more.
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Mock interviews suite
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On-demand timed tests
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10,000 interview questions
100,000 hours of video explanations
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11 programming languages

Get upto 15 mock interviews with                   hiring managers

What makes our mock Interviews the best:

Hiring managers from Tier-1 companies like Google & Apple

Interview with the best. No one will prepare you better!

Domain-specific Interviews

Practice for your target domain - Back-End Engineering

Detailed personalized feedback

Identify and work on your improvement areas

Transparent, non-anonymous interviews

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Career impact

Our engineers land high-paying and rewarding offers from the biggest tech companies, including Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Tesla, and Netflix.

Suat Mercan

Senior Software Engineer
Placed at:
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IK’s back-end engineering program helped me learn helpful nuances in programming and understandthe fundamentals of system design. The instructors from FAANG companies were inspiring. The mock interviews are also very helpful to get exposed to interviewing experience.

Chun Wu

Senior Software Engineer
Placed at:
I joined iK after stumbling across it while reviewing some other interview prep materials after doing poorly in an interview at Linkedin. I knew that doing well in these interviews would require dedication and investment of my time - but with so many resources online I didn't have structure. This is what the IK platform provided me.

Shrey Shrivastava

Software development Engineer ll
Placed at:
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The Interview Kickstart course is very structured and informative. They teach you about DS and algo fundamentals very thoroughly and also prepare you for the software engineering interview. I really like the live classes by FAANG engineers, and the homework and tests definitely help you toprepare for a real interview. If you have been looking for a bootcamp that prepares you for software engineering interviews, I would say this is definitely the right place to do it.

Sridhar Gandham

Senior Software Engineer
Placed at:
My experience at IK was extremely positive. I was preparing for FAANG companies using the standard techniques that you find on the internet. When I started preparing, there was no structure to the madness. For example, a simple quicksort can be implemented in multiple ways. So solving a medium problem would take me about 30 minutes. The biggest benefit that I got from IK was a clear, structured way of solving problems. After IK, I could solve medium problems in 10 minutes!

Akriti Bhatt

Software Engineer
Placed at:
Interview Kickstart is a great platform to perfect your basics and get a deep understanding of algorithms. These sessions helped me crack Google and several other companies.
Having struggled for a while to understand what I was doing wrong in interviews and how to behave during an interview, I took the help of 1-1 interview sessions with the mentors and the guidance provided by them helped me understand the problem with my approach.
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Learn more about Interview Kickstart and the Back-end Developer course by joining the free webinar hosted by Ryan Valles, co-founder of Interview Kickstart.

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A Free Guide to Kickstart Your Back-End Engineering Career at FAANG+

From the interview process and career path to interview questions and salary details — learn everything you need to know about Back-End Engineering careers at top tech companies.
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What to Expect at Back-End Engineering Interviews

Generally, the interview process for back-end engineers is divided into the following segments:
1
Recruiter screening
The hiring recruiter will contact you by phone to discuss his or her work experience. The recruiter will determine which roles you are qualified for based on your work experience. Knowing which projects and experiences you want to talk about before going into the interview can be helpful.
After going through this round, you should receive a follow-up email from the recruiter that will include an online technical assessment.
2
Online assessment
This interview is an online screening of your programming skills. You will have about 90 minutes to complete three coding challenges similar to Leetcode. In each challenge, you will be tested on data structures and algorithms. It is important that you write compiling code and pass the majority of the test cases shown in the UI.
To prepare for this round, you should:
  • Be thorough with data structures and algorithms in a particular language (IE python, java, etc.)
  • Revise space and time complexities
  • Practice problems online on websites like Leetcode
3
Final interview stage
This round consists of 4-6 interviews of one-hour each. These rounds are as follows:
  • 2- 3 technical programming interviews
  • 1-2 system design interview
  • One behavioral interview
4
Technical Programming Interviews
These interviews will each consist of one programming challenge, where you will be given a coding challenge similar to the ones in the online assessment, but this time with an actual SDE.
The challenges will test your knowledge of data structures, algorithms, and OOP. During the problem-solving stage, you will be asked about test cases, time/space complexity, and ways to improve the solution. 
Using an online coding practice website like Leetcode to prepare for the back-end engineer interview questions on tech programming can be extremely beneficial. While practicing, make sure to include questions about algorithms, data structures, and object-oriented programming.
System Design Interview
This section will be with a Hiring Manager or principal engineer who will test your system design skills. An example of a system design question could be “Design Instagram,” in which you should:
  • Dive into the requirements and assumptions
  • Layout the architecture
  • Define some databases
  • Define some APIs
  • Define performance-related parts of your design
This section is about designing the software rather than coding it. However, depending on the problem, you may have to pseudo-code at times.
To prepare for the back-end engineer interview questions on system design, you should practice software design. You should understand servers, caching, performance-related topics, databases, APIs, etc.
Behavioral Interview
A "Bar Raiser" conducts this back-end engineer interview on behavioral skills, which is primarily about the experience and how one can relate to specific behavioral topics and scenarios. In an Amazon interview, for example, you will be asked behavioral questions about their leadership principles, and the interviewer will assess whether or not your answers align with the company's values.
You should prepare for this section by understanding Amazon’s 16 Leadership Principles and how your experience relates to them. Also, when you are explaining your solution, try to use the STAR (situation, task, action, and result) method to break down your answer. 
Final decision
After the final round of back-end engineer interview questions, you should hear back within two weeks. During the interview, your technical skills and behavioral responses will be compared to the technical competencies of the role, as well as the principles of the company, to see if you’re a good fit.
To clear the tough interviews at the top tech companies globally, you’ll need to have the right skills. Read 7 Back-end Developer Skills You Must Have to Crack Tech Interviews and start getting ready! 

Back-End Engineering Interview Questions

Back-end developer interview questions for beginners evaluate the basic understanding of different programming languages. The difficulty level of questions keeps increasing as per your experience level. Advanced back-end engineering interview questions are focused on the framework of back-end development, technologies, languages, etc.
The back-end engineer developer questions can be classified into three buckets:
1
Back-End Engineering Interview Questions on Coding
Given the root node of a binary tree, clone it (clone every node of the tree) and return the root node of the cloned tree.
Given a binary tree and an integer k, find all the root to leaf paths that sum to k.
Given a set of integers and a target value k, find whether there is a non-empty subset that sums up to k.
Count the number of inversions in a given array of numbers. A pair (nums[i], nums[j]) is said to form an inversion if nums[i] > nums[j] and i < j.
Given a sorted dictionary of an alien language, find the order of characters in the alphabet.
For some of the most popular coding questions for software engineers, go over Top Coding Interview Questions for Software Engineers.
2
Domain-specific Back-End Engineering Interview Questions
How will you implement indexing for all the payments for an e-commerce application?
Design an API for a weather application using REST and non-REST architecture styles
How to test an API for security threats? Understanding the threats and then working on steps to prevent security threats: XSS, CSRF, SQL injection, input sanitization.
Build a mathematical library for a computer algebra system like Mathematica
What properties govern transaction reliability? What are the characteristics of data inconsistency? What is transaction isolation, and how would you use it for concurrency control?
3
Back-End Engineering Interview Questions on Behavioral Skills
Tell us about a time when you received criticism about your work and how you handled it. 
If you have to deliver negative feedback to members of your development team, how would you do it?
Tell me about your favorite development project to date and what it was like from start to finish.
Describe a conflict you had with your manager or team member.
How would you handle dependencies in cross-functional teams?

Back-End Engineering Career

Deciding to be a back-end engineer can be an exciting and rewarding career choice. However, before that, you’ll need to first learn all there is to know about the role and then start preparing for the back-end engineer interview.
1
Back-End Engineering Job Roles and Responsibilities
Back-end developers build programs and establish workflows that are focused on how a web application works. Then, they lay the code that powers web applications with functionality and logic. Back-end programming requires a tech stack consisting of servers, libraries, applications, and databases.
Even though the specific responsibilities of back end developers may vary from company to company, their key responsibilities include:
Working on server-side logic and outward-facing web application elements
Optimizing the applications for maximum speed and scalability
Designing data storage solution
Developing content management system and maintaining the same
Troubleshooting and debugging applications
Creating reusable code and libraries for future use
Write code and tests, build prototypes, solve issues, profile and analyze bottlenecks
Design robust APIs that support mobile and desktop clients
To understand the different roles of a back-end developer better, here’s how the responsibilities change as you move up the ladder:
2
Junior Backend developer
Has approximately 1-2 years experience and basic programming foundations. The roles and responsibilities of an entry-level back-end engineer involve:
Collaborating with other developers to plan and build features for current products.
Contributing to the design and architecture of the application servers, Enhance analytics and overall backend architecture for better performance.
Write high-quality, structured application/interface code, and documentation and take part in code review procedures to find security vulnerabilities or poor code quality issues before new code is made available to the public
Create and consume RESTful APIs.
Design, develop, and maintain internal and external applications. Build efficient, testable, and reusable modules.
Identify solutions through research and collaboration that resolves the root of problems as they arise.
3
Senior Backend developer
Has approximately 2-8 years of experience and is responsible for server-side web application logic and integration of the work front-end developers do. The roles and responsibilities of a senior-level back-end engineer involve:
Developing new features and functionality for various pages in an application
Continuously improving, refactoring, and modernizing the existing codebase
Monitoring quality, optimizing performance, and developing test coverage and methodologies for continuous code release
Understand architectural patterns of large, high-scale web applications, such as well-designed APIs, high-volume data pipelines, and design efficient algorithms. 
Work with the product managers, the technical leads, the experience designers, and other software developers to do research, and implement various workflows.
Implement the cloud and microservices stack, connecting cloud platforms and tools to partner and customer ecosystems
Design, prototype, implement, test, and troubleshoot backend workflows according to market requirements and product specifications
4
Lead Backend Developer
Has an experience of 8+ years of experience and acts as a technology professional who guides projects and manages development teams. They've often experienced experts with lots of industry knowledge and skills that qualify them to mentor teams and communicate with others outside their department. The roles and responsibilities of a senior-level back-end engineer involve:
Participate in the design, implementation, and testing of distributed systems in an agile environment. Decompose high-level and complex requirements into task-level work for themselves and others on the team.
Ability to understand and build complex systems to solve challenging analytical problems, complete research activities for new features and enhancements, and contribute to design and code reviews
Engage in engineering culture to consistently deliver value to our customers and business
Lead, coach, mentor, and work with other developers to design and implement secure, scalable, highly available services using our core web technologies.
Make recommendations for the development and implementation of complex projects that require comprehensive and in-depth analysis and understanding of the client’s requirements.
Design and Develop Highly Scalable, Available microservices using Microservices Architecture.
Build APIs and services that support both mobile apps offered by CVSHealth and are used internally.
Migrate on-prem web applications and backend services to the cloud.
Drive best practice, quality, and consistency within design and development phases
Contributing to team meetings, troubleshooting development and production problems across multiple environments and operating platforms
5
Staff Backend developer
Has an experience over a range of 10-15+ years and works on the technical team at an organization, to decode, design, develop, and maintain company backend systems and servers to ensure an efficient user experience.
Plays a leadership role in maintaining and improving the web stack, data architecture, build, deploy & test, software lifecycle, and platform scalability
Leading the development of internal and administrative tools required for products to scale
Be the technical leader for the team of engineers building best-in-class software
As a self-motivated and enthusiastic member of the team, collaborate with extremely smart and proficient peers leading and designing solutions with a strong background in distributed systems, and large-scale database systems.
Work in an agile environment with a focus on problem-solving and engineering perfection. As a technical lead, A staff backend developer is expected to assess business problems, design optimal solutions, and drive implementation to meet the business expectations.
Collaborate closely with peers, Architects, Product Managers, Business Analysts, Quality Engineers, and Operations teams to develop innovative solutions that meet functional and non-functional standards and expectations.
As a staff backend engineer, you will guide junior and senior engineers in your team and also across domain teams in building scalable, high-speed, distributed applications and advocate for meeting the design and quality standards.
For a more detailed description of these roles and responsibilities, read What Is the Career Path for Back-end Engineers? Learn more about the different roles and how to prepare for back-end engineer interviews.

Back-End Engineer Levels at FAANG

More responsibilities are added to your job description as you gain experience and knowledge. Companies use levels to represent this ascension. Companies essentially determine job levels to classify tasks such as compensation structure, leadership, and accountability.
The software engineer levels at FAANG companies are
  • Facebook: E3 (entry-level) → E4 → E5 → E6 → E7 → E8 (equivalent to Director; D1)
  • Apple: ICT 2 (entry-level)  → ICT 3 → ICT 4 → ICT 5 → ICT 6 (highest level for a software engineer)
  • Amazon: L4 (SDE I) → L5 (SDE II) → L6 (SDE III) → L7 (Principal SDE) → L8 (Senior Principal SDE) → L10 (Distinguished Engineer)
  • Netflix: Unlike other FAANG companies, there is only one level on the ladder of progression for software engineers. The company strictly hires only experienced employees; thus, the Netflix senior software engineer position is the only level.
  • Google: L3 → L4 → L5 → L6 → L7 (Senior Staff Software Engineer) → L8 (Principal Software Engineer) → L9 (Distinguished Software Engineer) → L10 (Google Fellow) → L11 (Google Senior Fellow)       
Facebook Back-End Engineer Salary
The average annual Facebook software engineer salary, ranked by level, is given below:
Back-End Engineer at Facebook
Average compensation by level
Level name
Total
Base
Stock (/yr)
Bonus
E3
$184K
$122K
$42K
$21K
E4
$265K
$162K
$83K
$22K
E5
$386K
$196K
$156K
$35K
E6
$574K
$229K
$297K
$50K
E7
$914K
$270K
$574K
$77K
E8
$1.49M
$304K
$1.10M
$88K
Amazon Back-End Engineer Salary
The annual Amazon software engineer salary at different levels has been given below:
Back-End Engineer at Amazon
Average compensation by level
Level name
Total
Base
Stock (/yr)
Bonus
SDE I
$166K
$126K
$22K
$20K
SDE II
$232K
$154K
$65K
$19K
SDE III
$336K
$169K
$157K
$18K
Principal SDE
$592K
$180K
$392K
$31K
Senior Principal SDE
$820K
$195K
$625K
$0
Apple Back-End Engineer Salary
Based on the different levels of hierarchy in the company, the average annual Apple software engineer salary has been given below:
Back-End Engineer at Apple
Average compensation by level
Level name
Total
Base
Stock (/yr)
Bonus
ICT2
$163K
$125K
$26K
$16K
ICT3
$216K
$147K
$55K
$18K
ICT4
$315K
$184K
$106K
$26K
ICT5
$447K
$216K
$194K
$39K
ICT6
$738K
$269K
$409K
$61K
Netflix Back-End Engineer Salary
As we’ve mentioned above, Netflix doesn’t have different levels for software engineers. The company only hires senior software engineers, and the average salary of a Netflix software engineer is estimated to be $511K (excluding bonus).
However, this value varies as per the office location, the seniority of the employee, and years of experience. An overview of total compensation received by Netflix software engineers:
Back-End Engineer at Netflix
Average compensation by level
Level name
Total
Base
Stock (/yr)
Bonus
Sr. SW. Engineer
$305K
$275K
$14K
$13K
Google Back-End Engineer Salary 
The average Google software engineer salary at different levels has been given below:
Back-End Engineer at Google
Average compensation by level
Level name
Total
Base
Stock (/yr)
Bonus
L3
$190K
$131K
$39K
$21K
L4
$267K
$159K
$81K
$29K
L5
$357K
$188K
$133K
$37K
L6
$493K
$225K
$218K
$57K
L7
$695K
$265K
$348K
$85K
L8
$1.04M
$332K
$605K
$120K
You can learn more about more related topics on our companies page.

Back-End Engineer Interview Course FAQs

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Is the Back-End Engineering Interview Course for freshers?
2
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3
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4
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5
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6
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN FULL STACK DEVELOPER AND BACKEND DEVELOPER

How to enroll for the Back-End Engineering Interview Course?

Learn more about Interview Kickstart and the Back-End Engineering course by joining the free webinar hosted by Ryan Valles, co-founder of Interview Kickstart.

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