EngMock Logo
EngMock.com
Medium
GoogleAmazon

Search in a Rotated Sorted Array Coding / DSA Interview

Given an array of distinct integers that was originally sorted ascending and then rotated at an unknown pivot, determine the index of a target value or report that it is absent.

Practice in Interview Dashboard

1. Problem Statement

You are given an array of distinct integers that was sorted ascending and then rotated at some unknown pivot, and a target value. Return the index of the target, or -1 if it is not present.

2. Live Coding Format

Work in the provided coding workspace while explaining your decisions to the live interviewer. Validation may use inline tests, examples, comments, or a verbal walkthrough.

3. Key Focus Areas

  • 1
    Problem clarification and contract
  • 2
    Approach exploration and optimality
  • 3
    Think-aloud communication and pacing
  • 4
    Implementation correctness
  • 5
    Code quality and language fluency
  • 6
    Handwritten tests and dry run
  • 7
    Debugging and self-correction
  • 8
    Complexity analysis
  • 9
    Follow-up performance

4. What Strong Candidates Should Demonstrate

  • ✓Clarify uniqueness of values, rotation guarantees, and no-match behavior before coding.
  • ✓Explain a linear-scan baseline and improve to a modified binary search.
  • ✓Think aloud while implementing careful boundary and midpoint logic.
  • ✓Validate with explicit expected outputs and a top-to-bottom handwritten dry run.
  • ✓Analyze time and space complexity and handle a bounded follow-up modification.

Want interactive feedback?

Practice this problem in the live coding workspace while the interviewer probes your clarification, implementation, trade-offs, and validation.

Continue to Dashboard

Core Concepts

Binary SearchArraysComplexity Analysis

Continue preparing

Build a complete software engineer mock interview plan

Explore this interview track →View the complete guide →

Prepare by company

Google interview guideAmazon interview guide

Related Coding / DSA

Longest Strictly Increasing Subsequence

Given a sequence of integers, find the length of the longest subsequence (not necessarily contiguous) whose elements are strictly increasing.

Related Coding / DSA

Find a Pair Matching a Target

Given a sequence of integers and a target value, return the positions of two distinct entries whose values add to the target.