Problem-Solving Foundations
for Senior Engineers
A deep, interview-grade program focused on how MAANG interviewers evaluate thinking, reasoning, and communication — not memorized solutions or shortcuts.
Designed as the foundation for Senior, Staff, and Principal-level interviews.
Why most DSA prep fails at Senior interviews
Most platforms optimize for problem count. Candidates memorize patterns, forget them later, and struggle the moment interviewers introduce ambiguity or ask follow-up questions.
Senior interviews test how you reason, explain decisions, and defend tradeoffs — not how fast you recall a solution.
Teaching philosophy
- • Translate vague problem statements into concrete constraints
- • Visualize state changes before writing code
- • Dry-run with intention, not mechanically
- • Identify best-case vs worst-case inputs explicitly
- • Explain why time and space complexity change
- • Communicate tradeoffs the way interviewers expect
The objective is to build long-term problem-solving ability — not short-lived recall.
Program structure
Interview-Grade Problem Solving Mindset
Learn how interviewers expect candidates to think — from handling ambiguity to articulating tradeoffs clearly.
Sliding Window & Two-Pointer Patterns
Fixed vs variable windows, real O(1) vs O(n) space reasoning, and interviewer traps that break surface intuition.
Recursion, Backtracking & State Trees
Recursion trees vs DAGs, exponential blowups, memoization as pruning, and depth probes.
Stack & Monotonic Stack Thinking
Boundary reasoning, histogram reductions, and why stacks encode historical state.
Trees & Graphs — Reasoning Over Traversal
DFS vs BFS tradeoffs, Union-Find intuition, cycle detection, and recursion limits.
Dynamic Programming from First Principles
State definition, transitions, DP as collapsed recursion trees, and knowing when DP is required.
Why this is not a typical LeetCode course
- • No memorized templates or pattern mugging
- • No rushing through solutions
- • Focus on interviewer evaluation signals
- • Deep dives into edge cases and failure scenarios
- • Best-case vs worst-case input analysis with examples
- • Real interview-style follow-ups
Pricing & access
How this fits into StaffSignal
Problem-Solving Foundations is the base layer for System Design mastery and AI-driven mock interviews inside StaffSignal.
Strong problem-solving thinking is a prerequisite for Senior, Staff, and Principal-level interviews.