Google Software Engineer Interview Experiences & Questions
43 candidates share their Google Software Engineer interviews: each round, the questions asked and the outcome. Latest: Oct 2026.
What to expect · Google Software Engineer
Based on 43 real interviews
The Google Software Engineer interview process
Most common round types: Coding (21), Behavioral (15), Data Structures & Algorithms (8), Technical (6), System Design (5), Project Discussion (3).
Real Google Software Engineer interview questions
- A LC type question and a AI based codebase bug fix
- Tell me about yourself.
- Find Leaves Of Binary Tree
- What do you know about algorithms?
- How much money does the Play Store make in a year?
- 1 ML sys design - how would you go about doing NLP and bag of words and create a system of words to predict the next word etc..
- What is the project you are most proud of?
- Find the minimum window substring.
- Given a family tree, find upcoming birthday
- What is your definition of success?
- Question: https://leetcode.com/discuss/interview-question/2064646/google-screening-interview-question-may-2022
- If the data set is too large to fit in memory on one machine and you have multiple workers, how would you sort it?
- Design a cache controller.
- One LC round about Djikstra
- What did you enjoy most about your last role?
- Give text corpus, build next word predictor
- Tell me about yourself and walk me through your resume.
- How would you improve LinkedIn Messaging?
- Define the scope and requirements for a snake_case to camelCase converter function.
- Design a payment system.
- One Behavioral round - asking my projects, work, hobby projects, conflicts, what is the proudest work I have done.
- Simple array and string processing
- Are you authorized to work here, are you open to relocation, and are we aligned on level and role details?
- How to rotate a queue?
- Given two strings and two allowed operations, swapping positions of letters and converting all occurrences of one character to another, can the first string be transformed into the second?
- Design an ad aggregation system.
- Last about another LC - this had a graph question - dont remember exactly but this was again very close to double bfs or something.
- plant adjacent crops in a 2d array field
- Complete the Google Hiring Assessment questionnaire.
- Given an array of strings, return groups of "buddy strings," where the strings have the same length and the distance between corresponding characters is the same.
- Given a train schedule with departure city, arrival city, start time, end time, and duration, and given a source and destination, find the sequence of trains that gets you there at the earliest possible time.
- Redesign the airport experience.
- linked list, add, delete
- Walk me through your previous internship and what you worked on there.
- I got a custom two-pointer/sliding-window string question over an array of strings, and the interviewer said he wanted a linear-time solution.
- Random sampling class game (Priority Queues and Hash Maps)
- Tell me about a time when you automated a task in your job.
- If you felt like you weren't getting credit for your work, how would you bring that up with your manager?
- Given a string and an integer width, return how many lines you can write the string in.
- Version of Djikstra's Algorithm
Showing 40 of 136 questions. Open any experience for every question and how the candidate answered.
All 43 Google Software Engineer interview experiences
“Typical Google screening round, I fumbled during the implementation using c++, hence got rejected. Make sure to write working code and go through test cases.”
“Just like any other normal SWE process. Online interviews were postponed a lot, took over 2 months to complete the interview process.”
“The questions were not too difficult, more so worry about asking clarifying questions and making sure your implementation is clear to the interviewer.”
“The overall interview process was really good. Both interviewers were experienced and made the rounds feel more like technical discussions than just solving a problem. In the first round, we…”
“Pretty standard process. Interviewers were friendly and seemed to enjoy the work culture. The interviews themselves weren't too difficult, mostly standard leetcode questions.”
“The process on start is very easy ( online assessment , phone screen) but coding is very difficult - LEETCODE MEDIUM”
“Overall, the interview process went well. The questions were clear and gave me an opportunity to explain my skills, experience, and interest in the position. I felt comfortable communicating with…”
“Overall, the interview process was well structured and the communication from the recruiting team was helpful. I appreciated receiving preparation materials in advance and having clarity on what to…”
“The process was straight-forward, I also felt sick the day before the phone interview and they rescheduled it without any problem. The phone interview was quite "flat", I talked almost the whole…”
“Throughout the process, I thought out loud, trying to take the interviewer along with me at every single step. He seemed pretty satisfied with my answers. At the end, we discussed the role of an…”
“The recruiter was very clear and prompt about the expectations and the reply time for emails was generally great. The technical interviews were all DSA and had a story built around the underlying…”
“I gave a high level design, came up with requirements both functional and non functional, designed api's, data modeling etc. The feedback I got was that I did not do a deep dive on certain components”
“few stages: an initial recruiter conversation, a technical screening, and then a set of onsite or virtual interviews. The technical rounds typically cover coding/DSA, system design, and behavioral…”
“Technical Depth: The technical discussions felt like peer-to-peer architecture reviews rather than a standard quiz. Mission Alignment: Every interviewer was deeply aligned with the company’s core…”
“The interview process was well organized and professional. The interviewer explained the process clearly and asked a mix of technical and behavioral questions. What went well was my ability to…”
“It's pretty standard. Medium difficulty, nothing that is really surprising. For the domain interview, they also expect you to do a mini-design, but it was simple and brief.”
“My case recruiter was unresponsive and they simply ignored me throughout the whole interview process and I still ghosted on the status.”
“i think i definitely underprepared so i am preparing a lot leading up to my nexxt interview it was a good experience”
“The interview process was challenging but very informative. The recruiter guided me well about preparation.”
“DSA is the key. Learning problems will not help but understanding them will. I had 2 rounds online (1 technical, 1 behavioral) and 2 technical rounds onsite. Each technical round had 2 questions and…”
“It was good, not much feedback during the interviews, so there was not a lot of help. Most of the interview was independent”
“HR is amazing. The first company in Australia I encountered that arrange a time for phone screen and confirmation beforehand but not random call candidates at any time.”
“Pretty easy, just very long. For technical just need to do leetcode, no system design. Interviewers help you if you are stuck.”
“My strongest Google round was with a senior interviewer who never opened a LeetCode prompt. He just asked what I knew about algorithms, pushed me into distributed merge sort from first principles,…”
“Overall, the interview process was a positive experience. I enjoyed getting to know the team and appreciated how the interviewers made the conversations feel collaborative rather than overly formal.…”
“The process was pretty straight forward. The recruiter gave good guidance and gave a list of concepts to prep from. Pretty generic.”
“The process was pretty straight forward just know how to do leetcode very well. I messed up the intervals question in which i was to merge intervals but build a new list on it which i could not…”
“Techs were fair medium LC. Team match is dependent on team. They offer a third technical if one of them went poorly, which was nice.”
“overall smooth. Learned that they really care about full line by line understanding not just throwing things at the wall and what sticks.”
“One of my onsite interviewers pasted a prompt that was basically one sentence long and then just sat back. That round made it click for me that Google was testing how I clarified and structured the…”
“Smooth process, time taken after technical is very long wait. Talking through code went well, communication is important.”
“The process was very profesional, got time to prepare and engage where possible, received alot of material to help me succeed.”
“Overall, the interview process was well organized and structured. I appreciated the communication throughout the process and the opportunity to speak with different people from the team. The…”
“The interview process was quite extensive, spanning approximately four months from the initial screening to the final offer. The interviewer mentioned that their goal is to accept candidates rather…”
“Google’s online assessment took me like 5 minutes and it was supposed to be 90, and that’s when I realized they really prioritize your interactions with the interviewer. You absolutely are not going…”
“Asked to code the pre order traversal of a tree. Later asked determine if pre order traversals of two trees are same or not.”
“The process focused on data structures, algorithms, and problem-solving. The interviewers were professional, and I was able to explain my approach. I could have managed time better when optimizing…”
“The process was tedious but having some patience helps. Ask questions first solve later. Understand what is being asked.”
“The interview process was well-structured and focused on both coding and system/infrastructure knowledge. The interviewers were professional and gave me enough time to explain my thought process. I…”
“It was okayish, however would have been better if I was better prepared for ML sys design fo NLP. I was good for CV projects and I filled out I want to go for CV but they gave me a NLP problem and…”
“The interview was not too bad, two mediums and two hards. I just don't enjoy coding that much so it went downhill.”
“It was nice but very robotic. The question was same as reported be others before. I started with the verbal solution first and then code in google doc.”
“They give you a study guide. I'd recommend reading it. It's your classic data structure and algorithms interviews.”
More: all Google interviews · Software Engineer interviews at every company
Frequently asked questions
How many rounds are in the Google Software Engineer interview?
Candidates report a typical 3 rounds, usually including a recruiter screen, online assessment, phone screen, take-home assignment.
How hard is the Google Software Engineer interview?
Candidates rate it 3.3/5 on average (medium), across 43 interviews.
How long does the Google Software Engineer hiring process take?
About 4 weeks from first contact to decision, based on reported timelines.
What percentage of Google Software Engineer candidates get an offer?
32% of candidates with a final result got an offer (9 of 28).
What does the Google Software Engineer interview focus on?
The most common round types are Coding, Behavioral, Data Structures & Algorithms, Technical.