Updated by Google candidates
Senior Software Engineer Interview Experience
It was basically the most by-the-book Google loop possible: shortest path in a DAG, minimum meeting rooms, then a news feed design where they kept pushing on fanout, storage, and ranking.
Interview process
It felt pretty classic Google. I had a phone screen with behavioral and coding, then an onsite with two coding rounds and one system design round. The technical side was straightforward and very standard, and the two coding problems I remember were shortest path in a DAG and minimum meeting rooms. For system design, they had me design a news feed and then pushed on scale, fanout, storage, and ranking. Nothing about the loop felt unusual.
- Phone interview
- Final round
Interview rounds
7 questions across 2 roundsPhone interview
4 questionsOverview
I had a phone screen that mixed behavioral with coding, but the part I remember most was the behavioral side. They asked about conflict, leadership, mentorship, and project details.
Question types asked
Final round
3 questionsOverview
My onsite was two coding rounds and one system design round. It was pretty straightforward and by the book, with standard LeetCode-style questions plus a news feed design.
Question types asked
Specific questions asked
How would you handle scale?
How would you think about fanout?
What storage choices would you make?
How would ranking work?
Interview tips
I would practice talking through test cases really clearly, because they cared a lot about that in the coding rounds. It did not seem like it was only about getting to an answer fast.
Company culture
The people I met seemed like they genuinely enjoyed the work culture, and the vibe I got was good WLB.
Get full access with a membership, or share your experience to try it free.
More Google interview experiences
“The system design wasn’t generic. It was built around the team’s actual work: an AI agent that lets enterprise users search and query their data and documents.”
“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, and apparently got more signal from that than a standard coding screen.”
