Optum interview questions
Optum, the health services and technology business of UnitedHealth Group, runs fast campus drives in India. A proctored online test with coding, aptitude and computer-science questions comes first, and the technical and HR interviews often follow within a day or two. Experienced hires get one or two technical rounds with more Java and Spring Boot depth, then a managerial round. Candidates say the process rewards knowing your resume and fundamentals more than hard algorithms.
Roles covered: Software Engineer and TDP Software Engineer for freshers; Senior and Lead Software Engineer, full-stack and data roles for experienced hires. We are not affiliated with Optum and this is not an official question bank. It describes what candidates consistently report, reviewed for the 2025–26 hiring cycle. Confirm the current process on the company’s own careers page before you apply.
Online assessment
Proctored. Coding plus aptitude and computer-science MCQs. Some full-stack tracks have used a web project instead
Easy-to-medium coding, cognitive ability and CS fundamentals like DBMS and OOP.
Technical interview
About 45 minutes. Experienced hires may get two
Your project, easy-to-medium DSA, DBMS and SQL. For experienced backend roles, Java concurrency, Spring Boot and microservices.
Managerial round (experienced hires)
Reported for lateral hires
How you design and own your work, sometimes with an architecture diagram of your current system.
HR interview
Short, often 15 to 20 minutes
Why Optum, teamwork and your location preference.
Explain your project, the challenges you faced and how you solved them.
Most interviews open here. Pick a challenge you actually solved and explain the trade-off you made.
Solve Two Sum, first by brute force and then optimised.
Show the brute force quickly, name its complexity, then move to the hash map version. Interviewers want to see the improvement step.
What is normalisation? Write a query using GROUP BY and HAVING.
Explain the normal forms with a small table, then write the query and say why HAVING can use an aggregate when WHERE can't.
How do threads share data in Java, and how do you keep it safe?
Cover synchronized, locks and thread-safe collections. Experienced candidates should give an example from their own service.
How does Spring Boot handle dependency injection and exceptions?
Asked in experienced backend rounds. Explain beans and auto-configuration, then how you'd return clean errors from a REST API.
What do you know about Optum, and why do you want to join?
Know that it's UnitedHealth Group's health services and technology business, and link your interest to healthcare technology.
Tell me about a conflict with a team member.
Describe the situation, what you did and how it ended. Show that you can disagree and still deliver.
Which location do you prefer?
Optum has centres in Gurugram, Noida, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Chennai. Give your preference and say whether you're flexible.
Where do you see yourself in five years?
Name a direction you could grow into at Optum, such as owning a service or moving into a lead role.
- Don't over-prepare hard algorithms. Reports consistently describe easy-to-medium DSA.
- Be ready to interview the day after the test. Campus drives often finish in one or two days.
- If you're an experienced Java developer, revise concurrency and Spring Boot internals. Those are the depth questions.
Practise them, don’t only read them
Practise these against an AI interviewer that asks the follow-ups and scores your answer, including the HR questions on notice period and expected CTC. Or check your resume first with the free ATS score checker.
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