Google Software Engineer candidates report an online assessment or recruiter screen, then LeetCode-style coding rounds, some system design, and a Googleyness behavioral interview. Graphs, trees and dynamic programming come up often.
$180K
Avg. Base Comp
$282K
Avg. Total Comp
3-5 rounds
Typical Rounds
1-3 months
Process Length
Across 12 candidate reports, the Google Software Engineer interview is mostly a data structures and algorithms test. Candidates describe LeetCode-style medium problems, with harder follow-ups in some loops. Graphs and trees come up repeatedly: BFS/DFS, topological sort, lowest common ancestor, Dijkstra, tries, and a currency-conversion graph problem. Several candidates also mention dynamic programming, backtracking, and cache design such as LRU.
How you talk matters nearly as much as the code. Candidates say interviewers wanted a straightforward solution first, then an optimization, with edge cases and Big O stated clearly. A few prompts were deliberately vague, so you may need to pin down inputs and outputs before coding.
Expect more than coding. Some candidates report a system design round, such as tracking tickets at scale or a restaurant customer system, and most mention a behavioral or Googleyness conversation about teamwork, leadership, deadlines and motivation. A few were also asked to go deep on a past project.
Only one of the 12 reports ended in an offer. Process shape varies: reports mention anywhere from three to five interviews, sometimes after an online assessment. Practice timed mediums, then rehearse explaining each solution aloud.
Synthesized from 505 candidate reports by our editorial team.
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Featured question at Google
Select the 2nd highest salary in the engineering department
| Question | |
|---|---|
| Empty Neighborhoods | |
| Top Three Salaries | |
| Merge Sorted Lists | |
| String Shift | |
| Top 3 Users | |
| Raining in Seattle | |
| First Touch Attribution | |
| Job Recommendation | |
| Minimum Change | |
| Find the First Non-Repeating Character in a String | |
| Daily Retention Summary | |
| Find the Index with Equal Left and Right Sum | |
| Find Bigrams | |
| Delivery Estimate Model | |
| Detecting ECG Tachycardia Runs | |
| Last Transaction | |
| Size of Joins | |
| Friendship Timeline | |
| The Brackets Problem | |
| P-value to a Layman | |
| Level Of Rain Water In 2D Terrain | |
| Google Maps Improvement | |
| N-gram Dictionary | |
| Third Purchase | |
| Four Person Elevator | |
| Nearest Common Ancestor | |
| Basic Regex | |
| Type-ahead Search | |
| Cyclic Detection |
Synthesized from candidate reports. Individual experiences may vary.
Candidates report different starts. Some began with an online assessment of coding problems, with one describing two LeetCode-medium questions. Others began with a short recruiter call covering background, logistics and the team. Which of these you get may depend on region and team, so confirm the order with your recruiter.
Several candidates describe an early technical round of about 30-45 minutes. Reported topics include intervals, optimization questions and a vague prompt that needed clarifying. Candidates say interviewers encouraged thinking out loud, so state a brute-force approach first and then improve it.
Candidates typically describe two to three coding rounds that are the hardest part of the loop. Reported problems include BFS/DFS, topological sort, lowest common ancestor, Dijkstra, tries, LRU cache, dynamic programming and backtracking. Follow-ups may raise the difficulty, and interviewers appear to value edge-case handling and complexity analysis.
Some candidates report a system design round, such as tracking tickets at scale or designing a customer management system, and it was described as easier than the coding. Others had a round probing a past project, or code review and debugging. Be ready to explain your own work and design trade-offs at a high level.
Candidates report a behavioral round covering why they want Google, teamwork, difficult coworkers, tight deadlines, leadership or management experience, and what Googleyness means. Some say behavioral performance mattered as much as the technical rounds, so prepare concise stories with clear outcomes.
