Vrbo Software Engineer Interview Guide

Getting ready for a Software Engineer interview at Vrbo? The Vrbo Software Engineer interview process typically spans several question topics and evaluates skills in areas like system and application design, object-oriented programming, data structures, and behavioral alignment with company values. Interview preparation is especially important for this role at Vrbo, as candidates are expected to demonstrate both technical proficiency and the ability to collaborate and communicate effectively in a fast-paced, global environment where user experience and product reliability are paramount.

In preparing for the interview, you should:

• Understand the core skills necessary for Software Engineer positions at Vrbo.
• Gain insights into Vrbo’s Software Engineer interview structure and process.
• Practice real Vrbo Software Engineer interview questions to sharpen your performance.

At Interview Query, we regularly analyze interview experience data shared by candidates. This guide uses that data to provide an overview of the Vrbo Software Engineer interview process, along with sample questions and preparation tips tailored to help you succeed.

Vrbo, part of Expedia Group, is a leading online marketplace specializing in vacation rentals, connecting travelers with property owners offering unique accommodations worldwide. Vrbo empowers families and groups to discover and book private homes, cabins, and condos for memorable travel experiences. As a Software Engineer at Vrbo, you will contribute to building scalable, user-friendly technology solutions that enhance the booking process and support Vrbo’s mission of making every vacation rental experience exceptional. This role directly supports Vrbo’s commitment to leveraging technology to fuel partner growth and facilitate unforgettable stays for travelers.

As a Software Engineer at Vrbo, you will design, develop, and maintain scalable software solutions that enhance the vacation rental platform’s user experience. You’ll work closely with cross-functional teams—including product managers, designers, and QA engineers—to build new features, improve system reliability, and resolve technical issues. Responsibilities typically include writing clean code, participating in code reviews, and contributing to architectural decisions. Your work directly supports Vrbo’s mission to connect travelers with unique accommodations worldwide by ensuring the platform is robust, user-friendly, and innovative.

2.1 Stage 1: Application & Resume Review

The process begins with an online application and a thorough resume review, where recruiters and technical screeners assess your experience in software engineering fundamentals, proficiency in algorithms and data structures, and your ability to design scalable web applications. Emphasis is placed on relevant technical skills, project experience, and alignment with Vrbo’s collaborative and customer-centric values. Ensure your resume clearly highlights your programming expertise, practical experience with CRUD operations, and teamwork or leadership roles.

2.2 Stage 2: Recruiter Screen

Candidates who pass the initial review are invited to a recruiter screen, typically over the phone or video. This conversation focuses on your background, motivation for joining Vrbo, understanding of the company’s mission, and general fit for the team. Expect to discuss your career goals, past projects, and how your values align with Vrbo’s culture. Prepare by researching Vrbo’s core values and reflecting on how your experience demonstrates adaptability, communication, and a user-focused mindset.

2.3 Stage 3: Technical/Case/Skills Round

The next step usually involves an online coding assessment or a take-home assignment. This round tests your practical software engineering skills, including algorithmic problem-solving, object-oriented programming, and system design. You may be asked to build a basic CRUD application, solve data structure problems, or complete a timed coding challenge. Occasionally, you’ll encounter a home assignment with specific constraints, such as designing RESTful APIs or implementing features without certain technologies. Preparation should focus on practicing coding under time constraints, reviewing common algorithms, and ensuring you can clearly articulate your design decisions.

2.4 Stage 4: Behavioral Interview

Candidates who perform well technically are invited to a behavioral interview, either remotely or onsite. This round assesses your interpersonal skills, collaboration style, and alignment with Vrbo’s values. Interviewers may ask about conflict resolution, communication in cross-functional teams, and how you handle feedback or adapt to change. Expect to discuss scenarios from your past experience that demonstrate empathy, problem-solving, and the ability to learn from setbacks. Prepare by reviewing the STAR (Situation, Task, Action, Result) method and reflecting on concrete examples from your career.

2.5 Stage 5: Final/Onsite Round

The final stage typically consists of multiple interviews with technical team members and hiring managers, sometimes conducted onsite or virtually. You’ll face two or more technical interviews focused on algorithms, system design, and practical engineering challenges, as well as a behavioral round with management. Interviewers may include current software engineers, technical leads, and cross-functional stakeholders. Be ready to discuss your approach to designing scalable systems, optimizing code, and collaborating across global teams. Preparation should include practicing technical presentations, reviewing architecture patterns, and anticipating questions on project ownership.

2.6 Stage 6: Offer & Negotiation

After successful onsite rounds, candidates receive feedback and, if selected, an offer from Vrbo. The recruiter will discuss compensation, benefits, and team placement. You’ll have the opportunity to negotiate salary and clarify expectations regarding your role and responsibilities. Prepare by researching industry standards for software engineer compensation and considering your priorities for growth, location, and work-life balance.

2.7 Average Timeline

The Vrbo Software Engineer interview process typically spans 2-4 weeks from initial application to offer, with fast-track candidates sometimes completing all stages in under two weeks. The timeline may vary based on scheduling availability, assignment deadlines, and team coordination, but Vrbo is known for its prompt communication and efficient process. Candidates should expect quick feedback after each stage, especially following technical assessments and onsite interviews.

Next, let’s dive into the types of interview questions you can expect at each stage of the Vrbo Software Engineer process.

3.1. Algorithms & System Design

Algorithmic thinking and system design skills are critical for Software Engineers at Vrbo. Expect questions that assess your ability to implement efficient algorithms, optimize solutions, and architect scalable systems for real-world business challenges.

3.1.1 The task is to implement a shortest path algorithm (like Dijkstra's or Bellman-Ford) to find the shortest path from a start node to an end node in a given graph. The graph is represented as a 2D array where each cell represents a node and the value in the cell represents the cost to traverse to that node.
Explain your choice of algorithm, justify its efficiency, and discuss how you would handle edge cases and large input sizes.

3.1.2 Create your own algorithm for the popular children's game, "Tower of Hanoi".
Break down the recursive approach, highlight the base and recursive cases, and discuss time complexity.

3.1.3 Determine the minimum number of time steps required to get from the northwest corner to the southeast corner of a rectangular building.
Describe your pathfinding logic, handling of obstacles, and how you optimize for time or resource constraints.

3.1.4 Design a scalable ETL pipeline for ingesting heterogeneous data from Skyscanner's partners.
Outline the architecture, discuss data validation, and explain how you’d ensure reliability and performance at scale.

3.2. Machine Learning & Modeling

Vrbo engineers are expected to understand machine learning fundamentals and apply them to solve business problems, including recommendation systems and predictive analytics.

3.2.1 Let's say that you're designing the TikTok FYP algorithm. How would you build the recommendation engine?
Describe your approach to feature selection, model choice, and how you would evaluate and iterate on recommendations.

3.2.2 Building a model to predict if a driver on Uber will accept a ride request or not
Walk through your model-building process, feature engineering, and how you’d handle class imbalance and evaluate performance.

3.2.3 Creating a machine learning model for evaluating a patient's health
Discuss data preprocessing, model selection, validation, and how you’d ensure interpretability and fairness.

3.2.4 As a data scientist at a mortgage bank, how would you approach building a predictive model for loan default risk?
Explain your end-to-end process, including data sourcing, feature engineering, algorithm selection, and risk evaluation.

3.2.5 How does the transformer compute self-attention and why is decoder masking necessary during training?
Describe the self-attention mechanism, its role in sequence modeling, and the importance of masking for training integrity.

3.3. Data Analysis & Experimentation

Strong analytical skills and a solid grasp of experimentation are vital for driving product improvements and business decisions at Vrbo.

3.3.1 How would you determine customer service quality through a chat box?
Outline key metrics, data collection strategies, and how you’d translate qualitative feedback into quantitative insights.

3.3.2 The role of A/B testing in measuring the success rate of an analytics experiment
Explain how you’d design, implement, and interpret results from an A/B test, including handling confounding variables.

3.3.3 Assessing the market potential and then use A/B testing to measure its effectiveness against user behavior
Discuss your framework for market assessment, experiment setup, and actioning insights from user data.

3.3.4 How would you evaluate whether a 50% rider discount promotion is a good or bad idea? How would you implement it? What metrics would you track?
Describe how you’d set up the experiment, select success metrics, and analyze the business impact.

3.3.5 How would you analyze how the feature is performing?
Detail your approach to tracking feature adoption, user engagement, and identifying actionable insights.

3.3.6 What kind of analysis would you conduct to recommend changes to the UI?
Explain how you’d use user journey data, A/B tests, and behavioral analytics to drive UI improvements.

3.4. Data Engineering & Quality

Software Engineers at Vrbo often work with large, messy datasets. Expect questions about designing robust data pipelines and ensuring data quality.

3.4.1 Describing a real-world data cleaning and organization project
Walk through your data cleaning process, including handling missing values, outliers, and standardization.

3.4.2 How would you approach improving the quality of airline data?
Discuss methods for identifying, prioritizing, and remediating data quality issues at scale.

3.4.3 Modifying a billion rows
Describe strategies for efficiently updating massive datasets, including batching, indexing, and minimizing downtime.

3.5. Presentation & Communication

Clear communication and the ability to tailor technical presentations to different audiences are essential skills for Vrbo engineers.

3.5.1 How to present complex data insights with clarity and adaptability tailored to a specific audience
Describe your approach to simplifying technical findings, using visualization, and adjusting messaging for technical vs. non-technical stakeholders.

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3.6 Behavioral Questions

3.6.1 Tell me about a time you used data to make a decision.
Focus on how your analysis influenced a concrete business or product outcome, and the impact of your recommendation.

3.6.2 Describe a challenging data project and how you handled it.
Highlight the specific obstacles, your problem-solving approach, and the final results.

3.6.3 How do you handle unclear requirements or ambiguity?
Explain your process for clarifying goals, communicating with stakeholders, and iterating based on feedback.

3.6.4 Tell me about a time when your colleagues didn’t agree with your approach. What did you do to bring them into the conversation and address their concerns?
Show your collaboration and communication skills, and how you built consensus or adapted your solution.

3.6.5 Give an example of when you resolved a conflict with someone on the job—especially someone you didn’t particularly get along with.
Describe the situation, your approach to resolving the conflict, and the outcome.

3.6.6 Describe a time you had to negotiate scope creep when two departments kept adding “just one more” request. How did you keep the project on track?
Explain your prioritization framework, communication strategy, and how you protected project deliverables.

3.6.7 Tell me about a situation where you had to influence stakeholders without formal authority to adopt a data-driven recommendation.
Discuss how you built trust, used evidence, and navigated organizational dynamics to drive adoption.

3.6.8 Walk us through how you handled conflicting KPI definitions (e.g., “active user”) between two teams and arrived at a single source of truth.
Outline your process for aligning definitions, facilitating cross-team discussions, and documenting the outcome.

3.6.9 Tell me about a time you delivered critical insights even though 30% of the dataset had nulls. What analytical trade-offs did you make?
Describe your data profiling, treatment of missingness, and how you communicated uncertainty to stakeholders.

3.6.10 How do you prioritize multiple deadlines? Additionally, how do you stay organized when you have multiple deadlines?
Share your prioritization techniques, tools for organization, and how you manage competing demands.

4.1 Company-specific tips:

Vrbo’s core mission is to connect travelers with unique vacation rentals, so it’s essential to understand how technology drives their business. Research Vrbo’s platform features, mobile and web user experience, and recent product launches. Be ready to discuss how you would enhance booking reliability, streamline search and discovery, or improve the listing management experience for property owners. Demonstrate an understanding of the travel marketplace landscape and Vrbo’s competitive differentiators within Expedia Group.

Showcase your alignment with Vrbo’s values of collaboration, customer obsession, and global impact. Prepare stories that illustrate your experience working in diverse teams, solving customer-centric problems, and adapting quickly in a fast-paced environment. Vrbo values engineers who can communicate effectively across functions—so highlight your ability to translate technical challenges into business outcomes and work closely with product managers, designers, and QA.

Understand Vrbo’s emphasis on scalability and reliability. Familiarize yourself with the challenges of building systems that support high traffic, global users, and complex booking flows. Be prepared to discuss how you would ensure uptime, handle peak loads, and design resilient systems that can gracefully recover from failures.

4.2 Role-specific tips:

4.2.1 Master algorithms and data structures, especially those relevant to real-world travel and booking scenarios.
Practice implementing algorithms such as shortest path (for route planning or recommendations), recursive solutions like Tower of Hanoi (for demonstrating problem decomposition), and efficient pathfinding in grid-based environments (mirroring booking or property search flows). Be ready to articulate your choice of algorithm, optimize for time and space complexity, and handle edge cases like large datasets or missing data.

4.2.2 Prepare to design scalable, maintainable systems and articulate your architectural decisions.
Expect system design questions that require you to build or extend core Vrbo features, such as search, booking, or messaging. Outline your approach to designing RESTful APIs, managing state, and integrating with heterogeneous data sources. Discuss trade-offs in architecture, including scalability, reliability, and maintainability, and show how you would validate and iterate on your designs.

4.2.3 Demonstrate strong coding skills and attention to code quality.
Vrbo values engineers who write clean, testable code. Practice building CRUD applications, refactoring legacy code, and participating in code reviews. Be ready to explain your thought process, defend design choices, and show how you ensure code quality through testing, documentation, and peer feedback.

4.2.4 Show proficiency in handling large, messy datasets and building robust data pipelines.
Prepare to discuss your experience cleaning, organizing, and processing large volumes of data—skills essential for features like personalization, search ranking, and analytics. Explain your approach to data validation, handling missing values, batching updates, and maintaining performance at scale. Highlight any experience with ETL pipelines, data quality monitoring, or optimizing queries for massive datasets.

4.2.5 Practice clear, adaptive communication for technical and non-technical audiences.
You’ll be asked to present complex ideas to stakeholders with varying technical backgrounds. Refine your ability to break down technical concepts, use visualizations, and tailor your messaging to the audience. Share examples of how your communication led to successful cross-functional collaboration or helped drive business decisions.

4.2.6 Prepare thoughtful behavioral stories that showcase your teamwork, adaptability, and customer focus.
Reflect on past experiences where you resolved conflicts, negotiated ambiguous requirements, or influenced stakeholders without formal authority. Use the STAR method to structure your answers, emphasizing the impact of your actions and what you learned. Vrbo wants engineers who can thrive in dynamic environments and contribute positively to the team culture.

4.2.7 Be ready to discuss prioritization and organization strategies.
With multiple deadlines and competing priorities, show how you stay organized and deliver high-quality work. Share your techniques for managing tasks, communicating status, and balancing short-term deliverables with long-term goals.

5.1 How hard is the Vrbo Software Engineer interview?
The Vrbo Software Engineer interview is considered moderately challenging, with a strong focus on practical coding skills, system design, and alignment with Vrbo’s collaborative culture. You’ll be tested on algorithms, data structures, and your ability to design scalable solutions for real-world travel scenarios. Candidates who prepare well and can articulate their technical decisions and teamwork experiences have a distinct advantage.

5.2 How many interview rounds does Vrbo have for Software Engineer?
Vrbo typically conducts 4-6 interview rounds. The process starts with an application and resume review, followed by a recruiter screen, a technical or coding assessment, behavioral interviews, and final onsite or virtual interviews with technical leads and managers. Each round is designed to evaluate both your technical abilities and your fit with Vrbo’s values.

5.3 Does Vrbo ask for take-home assignments for Software Engineer?
Yes, Vrbo occasionally assigns take-home coding or design challenges as part of the technical assessment. These assignments often involve building a small application, solving algorithmic problems, or designing a scalable system. The goal is to assess your coding style, problem-solving skills, and ability to deliver quality solutions independently.

5.4 What skills are required for the Vrbo Software Engineer?
Key skills include proficiency in algorithms and data structures, object-oriented programming, system and application design, code quality, and data pipeline development. Strong communication, collaboration, and the ability to work with cross-functional teams are also essential. Experience with scalable web architectures, RESTful APIs, and handling large datasets is highly valued.

5.5 How long does the Vrbo Software Engineer hiring process take?
The typical hiring process at Vrbo spans 2-4 weeks from application to offer. Fast-track candidates may complete the process in under two weeks, but timing can vary based on scheduling, assignment deadlines, and team coordination. Vrbo is known for prompt communication and efficient feedback at each stage.

5.6 What types of questions are asked in the Vrbo Software Engineer interview?
Expect a mix of technical and behavioral questions. Technical topics include algorithms, system design, coding challenges, data engineering, and problem-solving in travel-related scenarios. Behavioral questions assess teamwork, adaptability, conflict resolution, and alignment with Vrbo’s customer-centric values. You’ll also be asked to present technical concepts clearly to different audiences.

5.7 Does Vrbo give feedback after the Software Engineer interview?
Vrbo typically provides high-level feedback through recruiters after each interview stage. While detailed technical feedback may be limited, candidates can expect timely updates on their progress and clear communication regarding next steps.

5.8 What is the acceptance rate for Vrbo Software Engineer applicants?
While specific acceptance rates aren’t published, the Vrbo Software Engineer role is competitive, with an estimated 3-6% acceptance rate for qualified applicants. Standing out requires both strong technical skills and a clear demonstration of Vrbo’s values in your interview responses.

5.9 Does Vrbo hire remote Software Engineer positions?
Yes, Vrbo offers remote Software Engineer positions, with some roles requiring occasional travel to offices for team collaboration or onboarding. Vrbo supports flexible work arrangements, especially for engineers who can demonstrate effective communication and teamwork in virtual environments.

• Related guides:
  • Vrbo interview questions
  • Software Engineer interview guide
  • “Top software engineering interview tips”

Ready to ace your Vrbo Software Engineer interview? It’s not just about knowing the technical skills—you need to think like a Vrbo Software Engineer, solve problems under pressure, and connect your expertise to real business impact. That’s where Interview Query comes in with company-specific learning paths, mock interviews, and curated question banks tailored toward roles at Vrbo and similar companies.

With resources like the Vrbo Software Engineer Interview Guide and our latest case study practice sets, you’ll get access to real interview questions, detailed walkthroughs, and coaching support designed to boost both your technical skills and domain intuition.

Take the next step—explore more case study questions, try mock interviews, and browse targeted prep materials on Interview Query. Bookmark this guide or share it with peers prepping for similar roles. It could be the difference between applying and offering. You’ve got this!