Interview Rounds
20 questions across 5 rounds
💻Online Assessment
4 questions · 2–3 LeetCode-style problems on HackerRank/Google's own platform. 90 minutes. Difficulty ramps from Medium to Hard.
Online Assessment
4 questions · 2–3 LeetCode-style problems on HackerRank/Google's own platform. 90 minutes. Difficulty ramps from Medium to Hard.
Given an integer array, find the number of sub-arrays whose XOR equals k.
Design a data structure supporting insert, delete, and getRandom in O(1) average time.
Find the minimum number of jumps to reach the end of an array where each element represents max jump length.
Given a matrix of integers, find the length of the longest increasing path where you can move in 4 directions.
🔍Technical Round 1
4 questions · 45–60 min. Pure DSA — trees, graphs, DP, strings. Interviewer cares as much about your approach as the solution.
Technical Round 1
4 questions · 45–60 min. Pure DSA — trees, graphs, DP, strings. Interviewer cares as much about your approach as the solution.
Serialize and deserialize a binary tree. Design your own encoding scheme.
Find the median from a data stream — support addNum and findMedian operations.
Given a matrix of 0s and 1s, find the maximum area rectangle containing only 1s.
Implement an LFU (Least Frequently Used) cache with O(1) get and put.
⚙️Technical Round 2
4 questions · Deeper DSA or a mix of DSA + system design intro. Often includes follow-ups that scale the problem significantly.
Technical Round 2
4 questions · Deeper DSA or a mix of DSA + system design intro. Often includes follow-ups that scale the problem significantly.
Word Ladder II — find all shortest transformation sequences from beginWord to endWord using a dictionary.
Design an in-memory file system supporting mkdir, ls, addContentToFile, and readContentFromFile.
Find the kth largest element in an unsorted array in O(n) average time.
Given a string, find the number of distinct palindromic substrings.
🏗️System Design
4 questions · 45–60 min. You're expected to drive the discussion — define scope, sketch architecture, deep-dive on trade-offs, and handle scale.
System Design
4 questions · 45–60 min. You're expected to drive the discussion — define scope, sketch architecture, deep-dive on trade-offs, and handle scale.
Design Google Drive — cover metadata storage, chunked file uploads, conflict resolution, and real-time sync across devices.
Design YouTube — video upload pipeline, transcoding, CDN delivery strategy, and recommendation feed at scale.
Design a distributed rate limiter that works across a fleet of API servers with minimal coordination overhead.
Design a real-time collaborative document editor (like Google Docs) — focus on OT/CRDT and conflict resolution.
🌟Googleyness & Leadership
4 questions · Assesses culture fit — intellectual humility, comfort with ambiguity, collaborative problem-solving, and passion for impact.
Googleyness & Leadership
4 questions · Assesses culture fit — intellectual humility, comfort with ambiguity, collaborative problem-solving, and passion for impact.
Tell me about a time you worked on a project that failed. What did you learn and what would you do differently?
Describe a situation where you had to influence engineers outside your team to adopt your technical approach.
Tell me about a technically ambiguous problem you solved. How did you structure your thinking?
How have you handled receiving critical feedback on code or a design you worked hard on?