HackWithInfy is a knockout with a hiring pipeline bolted on. Two three-hour coding rounds thin the field; the top 100 fly to a four-day team hackathon; and at every step, strong individual performers are pulled out for pre-placement interviews. The 2026 edition brought back an in-person Round 2, which the 2025 edition did not have.
Stage-by-stage
| Stage | Mode | Format | Duration | What it decides |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starting Block | Online | Registration, mock test, "Level Up" prep sessions | Jan – Mar | Nothing scored — warm-up only |
| Round 1 — Qualifier | Virtual, proctored (Infosys Assessment Platform) | 3 coding problems — easy, medium, hard | 3 hours | Round 2 seat; first PPI shortlist (SP / DSE) |
| Round 2 — Qualifier | In-person at Infosys DCs / partner campuses | ~4 coding problems, easy to complex (candidate-reported) | 3 hours | Top 100 to the finale; SP-level PPIs, often the same day |
| Grand Finale | In-person, Infosys campus | Team hackathon (teams formed by Infosys) + showcase | 4 days | Cash prizes, Champion of Champions, internships |
Round 1 — virtual qualifier
A three-hour proctored contest on the Infosys Assessment Platform, taken from home with webcam on. Participants consistently report three problems in rising difficulty — an implementation or maths problem, a medium problem (two pointers, hashing, greedy, prefix sums) and a hard one (dynamic programming, graphs, occasionally segment trees). Scoring is per test case, so partial credit counts and there is no negative marking. Reports from the 2025 and 2026 cycles put the Specialist Programmer shortlist at roughly "2.5 problems" — two full solves plus a partial on the third.
Round 2 — in-person qualifier
Round 1 qualifiers are called to an Infosys development centre or a partner college campus (2026 reports name university venues) for a second three-hour assessment on the same platform. Participants describe four problems stepping from easy to complex — greedy, grid and state-transition DP, optimisation — and note that the PPI often happens the same day: paper coding, then a 30–40 minute technical discussion. Round 2 rank decides the 100 finale seats.
Grand Finale
A four-day, all-expenses-paid event at an Infosys campus (Pune DC in 2025). Infosys forms the teams; each builds a working solution to a themed problem statement (2025: "SPACE"; 2026: AI-powered solutions) over a roughly 40-hour hackathon, with mentoring from the Strategic Technology Group, a showcase, and a final-day interview for the Champion of Champions award. Bring your own laptop with your tool chain installed — it is a stated requirement.
Contest rules worth memorising
- Languages on the platform: C, C++, Java and Python are always available; JavaScript has been offered in recent cycles — check the language dropdown in the mock test.
- Programs read from standard input and write to standard output; output is compared exactly.
- Partial marks per test case — submit the brute force early, then optimise.
- Proctoring: single screen, camera on, no tab-switching; a flagged session is a disqualification, not a warning.
- One account, one attempt per round. Slot and result mails come from the HackWithInfy address, so whitelist it.
The three-hour, three-problem shape is identical to the SP/DSE off-campus assessment. Prepare once, use it twice. For a week-by-week plan see how to prepare.