What is the interview process like at Alphabet?

Google runs one centrally-designed loop that varies mostly in the content of its technical rounds: a recruiter conversation, an optional online assessment or role-related project, then a panel of independent 45-minute interviews scored against fixed rubrics, followed by team matching and a hiring-committee decision that the interviewers themselves do not make. Engineering candidates get three to four algorithm-heavy rounds plus a Googleyness behavioural round. Data, product, program, design, sales and data-centre candidates get the same four-signal frame (Role-Related Knowledge, General Cognitive Ability, Leadership, Googleyness) delivered as SQL and data-modelling, product cases, pitch roleplays, portfolio reviews or troubleshooting scenarios instead. The long tail after a positive panel (team matching, then hiring committee) is where several accounts stall or get downlevelled even after strong interview feedback.

What topics does Alphabet test in interviews?

Commonly reported topics include Algorithms, Data structures, Coding, Whiteboard coding, Python, C.

Google (Alphabet) Interview Questions & Experience

Software Development Engineer (India)

Received an offer

Experienced. 8 rounds. Shared by GeeksforGeeks contributor (unnamed) on gfg, 2024-05-21

1Recruiter introductory callPhone screenThe recruiter laid out exactly what would be graded: syntactically correct modular code with sensible naming, an optimal algorithmic solution with a known complexity, continuous thinking aloud, and coding speed under time pressure.Covered: Resume deep-dive
2Phone screen (45 min)Phone screenAn easy hashing-based problem plus a harder follow-up. The feedback relayed afterwards was unusually granular, covering thought process, communication, coding speed and language depth.Covered: Arrays & strings, Data structures & algorithms
3Onsite coding 1 (45 min)TechnicalA medium pattern-matching problem and a follow-up, then a discussion of how the same approach would hold up at scale.Covered: Arrays & strings, Scalability
4Onsite coding 2 (45 min)TechnicalA medium string problem. Once he had coded it the interviewer changed a core part of the requirement to see how flexibly the code could be adapted.Covered: Arrays & strings, Data structures & algorithms
5Onsite coding 3 (45 min)TechnicalA hard graph question he could not crack directly, so he decomposed it and optimised piece by piece, arriving with the interviewer's help at a traversal-plus-DP solution.Covered: Graphs, Dynamic programming
6GoogleynessBehavioralSituational questions about how he would react as a Googler in various workplace scenarios. His recruiter's only advice was to be honest, and he found it the most enjoyable round.Covered: Behavioral, Conflict handling
7Team matchHiring managerTwo 30-minute conversations with managers of teams he had ranked, discussing the work he had done and wanted to do.Covered: Past projects
8Hiring committeeFinalThe recruiter assembled a packet of interview feedback, documents and internal references for a committee he never met. The criteria were opaque to him.Covered: Resume deep-dive

Site Reliability Engineer (Mountain View)

Outcome not shared

Experienced. 8 rounds. Shared by Peteris Krumins (catonmat) on blog, 2008-12-02

1Recruiter phone screenPhone screenThe recruiter walked the process and had him self-rate zero to ten across C, C++, Python, networking, algorithms, distributed systems and Linux administration, which is what steered him from a software-engineer track to SRE. A light technical section on Linux administration, algorithms, architecture and C followed as a bluff check.Covered: Resume deep-dive, Operating systems, Networking
2Phone technicalTechnicalAn engineer from the ads team opened with an out-of-core sorting problem and made him narrate the data structures he would use, then moved through data structures, DNS behaviour, TCP mechanics and a TCP-related security weakness.Covered: Data structures & algorithms, Networking, Scalability
3Phone codingTechnicalA simple set-difference program dictated over the phone, which proved impossible to speak aloud so he emailed the code, then escalated to how the solution changes at gigabyte and terabyte scale. Closed on DNS, HTTP and routing.Covered: Arrays & strings, Scalability, Networking
4Onsite, experience deep-diveTechnicalForty-five minutes on a past project he built in C on Linux, and how it would change at very large user counts, ending with basic Unix filesystem questions.Covered: Past projects, Operating systems
5Onsite codingTechnicalOpened with a geometry trick question, then asked him to implement the general version in C and write a binary tree on the whiteboard, where the interviewer caught him leaving a freshly allocated structure uninitialised.Covered: Trees, Data structures & algorithms
6Onsite troubleshooting and networkingTechnicalThe interviewer drew a network topology hiding a fault. He had to locate it purely by asking targeted diagnostic questions, then answer device- and OSI-model questions.Covered: Networking, Debugging
7Onsite codingTechnicalA single string-manipulation routine in C consumed the whole slot. He made an off-by-one error.Covered: Arrays & strings
8Onsite algorithms and data structuresTechnicalThe out-of-core sort from the phone round made distributed: sort data that does not fit in memory across a hundred machines. He reached the correct map-reduce-shaped answer near the end, which the interviewer said few candidates do.Covered: Data structures & algorithms, Scalability, Concurrency

Site Reliability Engineer

Not selected

unknown, Dublin, Ireland. 7 rounds. Shared by bostik on hn, 2014-03-16

1Recruiter screenPhone screenRecruiter screen with easy questions.
2Technical phone interviewTechnicalOne technical phone interview. The second was skipped.
3C and memoryTechnicalOnsite questions on C, memory mappings and their security implications.Covered: C, Memory mapping, Endianness, Security
4Python codingTechnicalA tricky Python problem the candidate did not finish after not sketching it first.Covered: Python
5TroubleshootingTechnicalA troubleshooting scenario covering both the technical fault and the users who caused it.Covered: Troubleshooting
6System designSystem designCollaborative walk-through of a DHT-like architecture.Covered: Distributed hash tables
7Unix internalsTechnicalDeep dive into Unix and Linux internals starting from the kernel task structure.Covered: Linux kernel, Process structures

Software Engineer L4 (backend, EMEA)

Not selected

Experienced. 6 rounds. Shared by u/EvilBit3514_HTTP418 on reddit, 2026-06-13

1Recruiter callPhone screenInbound recruiter contact on LinkedIn in early February, with the call five weeks later.Covered: Resume deep-dive
2Technical screenTechnicalA two-pointer and greedy problem in a pattern he had not met before. He reached the time-optimal but not space-optimal solution, took a hint, and then coded a harder follow-up optimally.Covered: Arrays & strings, Data structures & algorithms
3GoogleynessBehavioralRan the day after the screen. He answered in STAR format and found the questions close to what public writeups had led him to expect.Covered: Behavioral, STAR stories
4Onsite technical 1TechnicalA heap-based problem he identified and coded quickly, with a straightforward follow-up.Covered: Data structures & algorithms
5Onsite technical 2TechnicalA DP problem he solved fast, with an unusual follow-up that took a brief struggle to crack.Covered: Dynamic programming
6Team matchingHiring managerPanel feedback was uniformly positive and he moved to team matching. The first hiring-manager call went well and the recruiter signalled the manager wanted to hire him. Final approval then downlevelled him to L3, which disqualified him from that role, and no second match followed.Covered: Past projects

Software Engineer L3 (Europe)

Outcome not shared

New grad. 6 rounds. Shared by u/dk_polinian on reddit, 2025-06-13

1Recruiter introPhone screenHe had applied for an internship months earlier. A recruiter resurfaced and offered a full-time L3 loop instead. Background and motivation questions only.Covered: Resume deep-dive
2Technical screenTechnicalOne medium problem. His solution worked but was neither clean nor optimal and the recruiter called the feedback 'not the strongest', yet he was advanced on the strength of how quickly he learned.Covered: Data structures & algorithms
3Onsite technical 1TechnicalA DP problem. He kept communication flowing and reached a working but inelegant solution.Covered: Dynamic programming
4Onsite designLow-level designBuild the class structure for a game with full functionality, then a deliberate mid-round requirement change framed as a product manager reversing the spec. He restructured the design and handled the follow-ups. His best round.Covered: Low-level design, OOP, API design
5Onsite technical 2TechnicalAnother DP problem taken from brute force to memoisation, ending with a joint edge-case hunt where he found two and the interviewer added two more.Covered: Dynamic programming, Testing
6BehavioralBehavioralAlmost entirely about his first internship: being onboarded in days, inheriting a project with an active backlog after the previous developer left, owning client communication and delivering on time.Covered: Behavioral, Past projects, STAR stories

Software Engineer L4

Outcome not shared

Experienced. 6 rounds. Shared by GeeksforGeeks contributor (unnamed) on gfg, 2024-05-28

1Phone screenPhone screenHe rated this the hardest stage: instead of the usual medium-plus-hard pairing he got two hard problems with follow-ups, built on array operations and bitmasking.Covered: Arrays & strings, Data structures & algorithms
2Onsite technical 1TechnicalA binary search over real-valued answers with a follow-up, plus a discussion of his own projects.Covered: Data structures & algorithms, Past projects
3Onsite technical 2TechnicalA classic priority-queue and heap problem, with the twist that the input arrived as a file so he also had to write the reading logic.Covered: Data structures & algorithms
4Onsite technical 3TechnicalA sliding-window problem using sets with two follow-ups, and a long stretch of the round spent on code quality and object-oriented structure rather than the algorithm itself.Covered: Arrays & strings, OOP, Testing
5GoogleynessBehavioralFive or six situational prompts he found the most intimidating part: conflict with a manager or teammate, handling failure, taking initiative outside your remit, helping a colleague, someone badmouthing you, and what to do when QA has not tested properly.Covered: Behavioral, Conflict handling, STAR stories
6Team matchingHiring managerThree separate team-matching conversations. End to end the process ran about two months from first recruiter call to team matching.Covered: Past projects

Software Engineer II (Early Careers, US)

Outcome not shared

New grad, compensation expectations discussed at recruiter screen. 5 rounds. Shared by u/nian2326076 on reddit, 2026-08-05

1Recruiter screen (30 min)Phone screenCurrent role, total experience, compensation expectations, motivation for moving, and an overview of the process. No technical questions.Covered: Resume deep-dive
2Technical (45 min)TechnicalA medium-to-hard problem combining a trie with a hash map. He got a working solution, stalled on optimising it, and finished after hints. Follow-ups covered alternatives, complexity, edge cases and the memory-versus-lookup trade-off. Rated strong hire.Covered: Arrays & strings, Data structures & algorithms
3Technical (45 min)TechnicalA hard graph problem requiring a modified disjoint-set-union. Follow-ups pressed on correctness of union and find, path compression, union by rank or size, complexity and disconnected components. His implementation got messy under time pressure but the round was still rated strong hire.Covered: Graphs, Data structures & algorithms
4Technical plus domain discussionTechnicalA problem combining DP and binary search where the interviewer walked him from recursion to memoisation to an optimal binary-search formulation. Because he works as an AI engineer, the last stretch became a discussion of production generative-AI use cases, agentic workflows, evaluation, latency, cost and deployment at scale.Covered: Dynamic programming, Scalability, Domain knowledge
5Googliness plus DSABehavioralHis weakest round: one algorithm problem he did not finish plus Googliness, collaboration and decision-making questions. He went silent when stuck instead of restating what he knew and naming the blocker. Rated lean hire.Covered: Behavioral, Conflict handling, Data structures & algorithms

Software Engineer

Not selected

New grad. 5 rounds. Shared by thaumasiotes on hn, 2022-03-01

1Algorithm interview 1TechnicalNear-total failure on the problem.
2Algorithm interview 2TechnicalDesign-flavored verbal problem that needed a binary search. Solved with little help.Covered: Verbal problem solving, Binary search
3Algorithm interview 3TechnicalGood initial solution refined to optimal with the interviewer's nudge.
4Algorithm interview 4TechnicalBrute-force solution accepted. Interviewer explained the optimal approach afterwards.Covered: Brute force approaches
5BehavioralBehavioralBehavioral interview that went only so-so. Later rejected before team-fit interviews.

Site Reliability / Software Engineer

Not selected

Senior. 5 rounds. Shared by faanginginthere on hn, 2020-03-31

1BehavioralBehavioralBehavioral interview that seemed to go fine.
2Coding interview 1TechnicalAmbiguous problem statement pasted without context, poor connection and a distracted interviewer.
3Coding interview 2TechnicalClear problem and conversational interviewer. Produced code close to the reference solution.
4Coding interview 3TechnicalStalled on a simple algorithm with only occasional hints.Covered: Algorithms
5System designSystem designDesign round with a mostly silent interviewer.

Associate Product Manager Intern

Received an offer

Internship. 4 rounds. Shared by u/secretappleee on reddit, 2025-12-11

1Recruiter phone screenPhone screenStandard screening call ahead of the product rounds.Covered: Resume deep-dive
2Product senseTechnicalA 45-minute product case with a PM. She ran a modified CIRCLES-style framework: state the outline, clarify, pause to write structured questions about business need, scope, timeline and constraints, then user segmentation with demographics and psychographics and a single prioritised segment.Covered: Case study, Market sizing
3Product interview with a PM directorTechnicalSame 45-minute product-case shape one level up. Her approach was to propose two solutions explicitly, name which she was prioritising, outline an MVP then the expansion, and check in with the interviewer at each transition to keep it collaborative.Covered: Case study, Market sizing
4Case study on business needCase studyA business-need case closing on risks, trade-offs and KPIs: engineering capacity, adoption, supply and timeline risks, what was deprioritised and why, and product-appropriate success metrics.Covered: Case study, Market sizing

Data Engineer (India)

Received an offer

Experienced. 4 rounds. Shared by u/MeinHuTopG on reddit, 2025-10-03

1Recruiter screening (60 min)Phone screenUnusually technical for a recruiter call: after explaining the architecture-heavy role, the recruiter asked two SQL problems, one Python and one Spark problem, eight to ten theory questions and standard fit questions. He then asked for three weeks to prepare and spent all of it on algorithms.Covered: SQL, Domain knowledge, Resume deep-dive
2Role-Related KnowledgeTechnicalRoughly four-fifths theory: big-data technologies, warehousing, Google Cloud services and hypothetical solution-design questions. His strongest round, rated strong hire.Covered: Domain knowledge, System design, Scalability
3General Cognitive AbilityTechnicalSplit in two. First he had to build a data model for a real-world system, then answer three or four SQL questions against his own model, so a weak model poisons everything after it. Then a single algorithm problem of roughly medium difficulty, solved with hints. He rated his own data modelling below par because he had prepped only coding.Covered: SQL, System design, Data structures & algorithms
4GoogleynessBehavioralTwo hypothetical and two behavioural questions over about forty minutes. He prepared four days specifically for it after the recruiter warned that candidates routinely fail here.Covered: Behavioral, STAR stories

Software Engineer Intern (Summer 2025)

Received an offer

Internship. 4 rounds. Shared by Dhruvi Shah on gfg, 2024-11-23

1Recruiter telephonicPhone screenA recruiter call covering her prior internship, the projects and tech stack behind it, her competitive-programming profiles and which language she wanted to code in. Ended with scheduling, and she was able to push the technical round out by two weeks because of end-semester exams.Covered: Resume deep-dive, Past projects
2Technical interview 1TechnicalTwo problems delivered in a shared Google doc. The first was stated in a single line with no test cases and she was asked to invent edge cases herself before proposing an approach. The second, with about ten minutes left, was a DP problem she took from recursion to memoisation. Closed with a few minutes on Google's culture.Covered: Arrays & strings, Dynamic programming, Testing
3Technical interview 2TechnicalA graph problem followed by a graph-based follow-up, with two approaches compared on time and space before the interviewer steered her to the better one. He probed her choice of a hash map of lists over a plain adjacency list.Covered: Graphs, Data structures & algorithms
4Transcripts and offer callFinalThe recruiter asked for all academic transcripts on short notice, then called the next day with the intern offer.Covered: Resume deep-dive

Software Engineer (on-campus)

Received an offer

New grad. 4 rounds. Shared by GeeksforGeeks contributor (unnamed) on gfg, 2024-10-15

1Online assessmentOnline assessmentTwo algorithm problems. 30 students from the campus cleared it into the interview stage.Covered: Data structures & algorithms
2DSA (45 min)TechnicalA shortest-path-under-a-deadline problem over flight objects with arrival and departure times, solved with BFS. He spent the first fifteen minutes explaining the algorithm, coded it in twenty, then fixed an edge case found during a dry run before a follow-up variant.Covered: Graphs, Data structures & algorithms
3DSA plus Googlyness (60 min)TechnicalA weighted-tree problem requiring edge deletions so that no two original leaves stay connected, minimising deleted weight. He iterated for half an hour and only got a brute-force solution out, then spent the last fifteen minutes on leadership questions about running teams and college events.Covered: Trees, Behavioral, Conflict handling
4DSA plus Googlyness (60 min)TechnicalHis strongest round: a DP problem about maximising distance travelled given a fuel budget and a fixed number of rest days, coded recursively then memoised, with three follow-ups escalating it from 2D to 3D DP. Closed with Googlyness questions about credit-stealing and taking a stand.Covered: Dynamic programming, Behavioral

Software Engineer (Full-time, on-campus)

Outcome not shared

New grad. 4 rounds. Shared by GeeksforGeeks contributor (unnamed) on gfg, 2024-09-27

1Online assessmentOnline assessmentA 60-minute test in which each candidate got two problems drawn from a pan-India pool of eight, most of them medium difficulty with a couple of hard ones.Covered: Data structures & algorithms
2TechnicalTechnicalA single problem about reconstructing an array consistent with several remembered subsequences, which reduces to a topological ordering. He gave both BFS and DFS formulations and coded them in roughly 25 minutes, then fielded several short follow-up questions.Covered: Graphs, Data structures & algorithms
3Technical plus behavioralTechnicalA minimum-sum fixed-size submatrix problem solved with prefix sums, then pushed to constant extra space, then varied so that zero-valued cells disqualify a submatrix. Ended with a handful of situational questions.Covered: Arrays & strings, Behavioral
4Technical plus behavioralTechnicalAn 'odd one out' word problem where the goal is to find the item whose removal maximises the attributes shared by the rest. A disjoint-set attempt failed before he landed on a prefix-and-suffix set-intersection approach. Coding it took about forty minutes, leaving time for Googliness questions.Covered: Arrays & strings, Debugging, Behavioral

Software Engineer Intern

Received an offer

Internship. 4 rounds. Shared by GeeksforGeeks contributor (unnamed) on gfg, 2024-05-07

1Resume shortlistTake-homeA pure resume screen that eliminates most applicants. He advises a single page ordered education, work experience, projects, competitive-programming profiles, achievements, bulleted and linked.Covered: Resume deep-dive
2Technical (45 min)TechnicalStrictly timebox 45 minutes, a couple of minutes of introduction then either two mediums or one hard. He puts the difficulty around Codeforces Div2 B/C and says the recurring areas were shortest paths, minimum spanning trees, topological sort, Eulerian paths, tree DP, combinatorics and tree queries.Covered: Graphs, Trees, Dynamic programming
3Technical (45 min)TechnicalSame format. He initially could not even parse what the question was asking and got there with the interviewer's hints, which he credits for the round going well.Covered: Graphs, Dynamic programming
4Hiring committeeFinalThe recruiter packaged his resume and interview feedback for a committee that returns hire, no hire, or a request for extra interviews when the existing feedback is inconclusive.Covered: Resume deep-dive

Data Analyst

Received an offer

Experienced, described the offer as underwhelming and left for another employer after a year. 4 rounds. Shared by u/IllustratorOk7613 on reddit, 2024-05-03

1Recruiter call (30 min)Phone screenRole details and levelling, with the recruiter reluctant to discuss compensation, which he found frustrating.Covered: Resume deep-dive
2Hiring manager (50 min)Hiring managerGeneral problem-solving scenarios followed by product-specific analytics questions grounded in a real Google product, such as how you would measure spam or abusive use of the browser.Covered: Case study, Domain knowledge
3Technical (60 min)TechnicalPure SQL, ramping from easy queries into self joins, running totals, percentiles and window functions. He found it easier than expected.Covered: SQL
4Googlyness (45 min)BehavioralA values round digging into past experience, including disagreements with managers and handling underperforming teammates. The decision came back within a week.Covered: Behavioral, Conflict handling, STAR stories

Technical Program Manager (Google Cloud, Kirkland)

Received an offer

Experienced. 4 rounds. Shared by Engineer Seeking FIRE (ex-Google TPM) on blog, 2023-11-01

1Recruiter phone interviewPhone screenA single call sampling all four TPM signals: describe a favourite project, go deeper on its system design, describe finding something broken in a product and fixing it with the team, and give an example of helping a teammate.Covered: Past projects, System design, Behavioral
2On-campus panelPanelA day of interviews at the Kirkland campus, some interviewers in the room and some over video. Overwhelmingly behavioural and past-project driven. He ran out of prepared stories by the last interviews. He was never asked to write code but had to discuss technical design in depth.Covered: Behavioral, STAR stories, Past projects, System design
3Team matchingHiring managerThe recruiter circulated his packet to hiring managers. An interested Google Cloud Platform manager scheduled a call, they agreed on a match, and the manager wrote a letter of support that was added to the packet.Covered: Past projects
4Hiring committeeFinalThe committee, not the interviewers, made the hire decision from the assembled packet. The offer call came a couple of weeks later.Covered: Resume deep-dive

UX Designer

Not selected

Experienced. 4 rounds. Shared by Umang Goel on blog, 2023-07-23

1Recruiter phone interviewPhone screenThirty to forty-five minutes on background, communication and general interest, covering her design experience, projects and process. The recruiter then shared preparation resources.Covered: Resume deep-dive, Past projects
2Portfolio reviewTechnicalA video session where she walked a Google designer through her work and got feedback. She advises leading with problem-solving, ideation, communication, collaboration, execution and research rather than visuals. A preliminary team match happened after this.Covered: Past projects, Case study
3Portfolio interview (panel)PanelA deeper version of the portfolio review in front of a panel of managers, designers and cross-functional partners, pressing on process, specific design decisions and how she attacks complex problems.Covered: Past projects, Case study
4One-on-one loopPanelFour separate calls with different team members: cross-functional collaboration, design leadership, a design challenge, and Googliness. She was not selected but was given performance feedback and encouraged to reapply in a year.Covered: Behavioral, Case study, Conflict handling

Role not stated

Outcome not shared

Internship. 4 rounds. Shared by belval on hn, 2021-10-08

1Online coding challengeOnline assessmentCompleted Google's hidden 'Foobar' coding challenge to get noticed, followed by an initial information form.
2Behavioral screening formBehavioralA form asking unusual behavioral questions, such as whether people can change.
3First technical interviewTechnicalStandard LeetCode-style coding questions.Covered: Algorithms
4Team matching formHiring managerA final form to indicate interests for team matching, with no guarantee of an internship offer at that stage.

Site Reliability Engineer

Not selected

unknown. 4 rounds. Shared by pzh on hn, 2016-10-14

1Recruiter prescreenPhone screenStandard scripted questions from the recruiter.Covered: Systems trivia
2Phone screenPhone screenTechnical screen leading to onsite.
3OnsiteTechnicalOnsite loop where coding was rated strong.Covered: Coding, Algorithms
4Extra system design interviewsSystem designTwo additional design rounds requested by the hiring committee, seven onsite interviews in total.Covered: System design, TCP/IP, Congestion control

Role not stated

Received an offer

unknown. 4 rounds. Shared by jowiar on hn, 2015-06-10

1Phone screenPhone screenStandard technical screen.
2OnsiteTechnicalFull-day onsite loop.
3Team callsHiring managerCalls with teams interested in the candidate.
4Second onsiteTechnicalAnother onsite round requested by leadership before the offer.

Role not stated

Outcome not shared

unknown. 4 rounds. Shared by felisGoodman on hn, 2013-08-20

1Casual phone interviewPhone screenInformal call shortly after being headhunted.
2Technical interviewPhone screenTechnical phone round after several reschedules.
3Second casual phone interviewPhone screenAnother informal call before the onsite.
4OnsiteFinalSix onsite interviews, followed by a multi-week wait for the hiring committee.

Software Engineer 2 (L3)

Received an offer

Experienced, Warsaw, Poland (relocation from India). 4 rounds. Shared by take U forward on youtube

1Recruiter screenPhone screenA recruiter call covering basic fundamentals such as time complexity rather than full algorithmic problems, to gauge readiness before scheduling the loop.Covered: Data structures & algorithms
2Telephonic technical screenTechnicalA single coding problem (with follow-ups) solved live in a video call. Feedback focused on code quality and speed of thinking.Covered: Data structures & algorithms
3DSA rounds (four)TechnicalFour back-to-back algorithmic rounds of roughly 40 minutes each, LeetCode medium to easy-hard difficulty, where speed and handling follow-up questions mattered most.Covered: Data structures & algorithms
4Googliness roundBehavioralAn HR/situational round assessing culture-fit qualities Google calls googliness.Covered: Behavioral

SDE-3 / L4

Not selected

Experienced, India, L4 total comp cited as roughly 80 to 85 lakh per annum (candidate's stated context, not an actual offer). 4 rounds. Shared by Scortier on youtube

1Phone screening roundPhone screenA DSA problem resembling inserting binary operators between digits to reach a target, solved with backtracking. Clarifying questions, brute force then optimal, then coding and a dry run.Covered: Data structures & algorithms, Arrays & strings
2Coding round 1TechnicalA 45-minute round with a combination-sum style problem solved via backtracking. Roughly 20 minutes went to explaining the approach, leaving only about 10 minutes to code.Covered: Data structures & algorithms
3Coding round 2TechnicalA 45-minute round with a paint-house style DP-with-memoization problem. The candidate struggled with edge cases and time management, which the interviewer flagged.Covered: Dynamic programming
4Googliness roundHiring managerA hiring-manager behavioral round on conflict resolution, delayed projects and stakeholder communication, plus a deep dive on an impactful past project, answered with STAR.Covered: Behavioral, STAR stories, Past projects

Software Engineering Winter Intern 2025 (off-campus)

Not selected

Internship. 3 rounds. Shared by GeeksforGeeks contributor (unnamed) on gfg, 2024-12-26

1Recruiter telephonicPhone screenA screening call on CGPA, preferred language, familiarity with data structures and algorithms, and coding-platform profiles.Covered: Resume deep-dive
2Google prep sessionPhone screenGoogle ran an optional preparation session two days later, emphasising explaining the approach before coding, clean naming and structure, justifying why the chosen solution fits, and practising under time limits.Covered: Testing, Debugging
3Technical (45 min)TechnicalA graph problem with discussion of optimisation strategies and edge cases. He reached a working but not fully optimised solution and got real-time feedback from the interviewer. The rejection followed after a long wait.Covered: Graphs, Data structures & algorithms

Role not stated

Not selected

New grad. 3 rounds. Shared by thaumasiotes on hn, 2024-12-08

1Phone screenPhone screenSingle screen graded to an entry-level bar. Passed.
2Virtual onsiteTechnicalFive interviews back to back in one day. Told afterwards that the candidate had passed.
3Team fit and decisionHiring managerWeeks of silence and a resume revision request, then told the scores were too low for an offer.

Site Reliability Engineer

Outcome not shared

unknown. 3 rounds. Shared by c0l0 on hn, 2024-07-29

1Phone screenPhone screenInitial recruiter/technical phone screening.
2Remote codingTechnicalCoding in a shared online document over speakerphone. Asked to rebuild a network-status tool in bash, candidate instead wrote simplified process-listing and file-user tools.Covered: Bash, Linux /proc, Process tools
3Onsite seriesFinalAdvanced to a series of in-person interviews.

Software Engineer Intern (off-campus)

Not selected

Internship. 3 rounds. Shared by GeeksforGeeks contributor (unnamed) on gfg, 2024-06-04

1Phone screeningPhone screenIntroduction, preferred language, tech-stack knowledge, number and type of projects, and availability for technical rounds.Covered: Resume deep-dive, Past projects
2DSATechnicalA problem she could not find on any standard practice site. She walked through a quadratic brute force, then a linear hash-map solution which she coded, then offered a third alternative when asked for more approaches.Covered: Arrays & strings, Data structures & algorithms
3DSATechnicalA long, hard-to-parse problem statement. She needed clarification, attempted a list-based solution that did not impress, and could not use the hints because she had not covered the required data structures.Covered: Data structures & algorithms

Role not stated

Not selected

unknown. 3 rounds. Shared by samstave on hn, 2024-01-18

1Panel interviewsPanelSeries of panel interviews spread over about three months.
2Final questionsTechnicalAsked how to do a global replace in vi and what kind of company Google really is.Covered: vi editor, Business model
3Offer stageFinalTold an offer was coming, then informed the next day it was withdrawn.

Datacenter Operations

Not selected

unknown. 3 rounds. Shared by bityard on hn, 2022-05-04

1Interview 1TechnicalVideo interview on background and systems knowledge.Covered: Resume, Linux, Hardware, Networking
2Interview 2TechnicalDiagnose a server that won't boot, with each fix answered by 'still doesn't boot'.Covered: Hardware troubleshooting
3Interview 3BehavioralMostly off-topic conversation about the candidate's background.

Role not stated

Received an offer

unknown. 3 rounds. Shared by steelframe on hn, 2021-08-30

1Phone screen (first attempt)Phone screenRejected from onsites after struggling with a question about choosing an appropriate Bloom filter size.Covered: Bloom filters
2Phone screen (second attempt)Phone screenA later attempt succeeded after impressing the interviewer with security and IPSec knowledge, advancing to an onsite loop.Covered: Security, IPSec
3Onsite interviewsTechnicalAsked a recursion question and a question involving Linux kernel list macros, both of which happened to align with recent study and prior work.Covered: Recursion, Linux kernel internals

Role not stated

Not selected

unknown. 3 rounds. Shared by bena on hn, 2020-10-09

1Phone screensPhone screenScreens across several attempts. One was interrupted by a hiring freeze.
2OnsiteTechnicalReached onsite twice.
3Hiring committeeFinalReached committee once and was rejected.

Associate Account Strategist (Google Ads, Dublin)

Received an offer

New grad. 3 rounds. Shared by Mohamad Saleh on blog, 2020-06-07

1Recruiter screeningPhone screenA conversation about his experience and career aspirations. The recruiter gave direct feedback on the structure of his answers before advancing him. He notes his first application to the same programme, two years earlier, ended in a rejection he treated as feedback.Covered: Resume deep-dive, Behavioral
2Sales case and pitchTechnicalRoughly twenty minutes of pitch plus twenty of general questions, run by a member of the hiring team. The interviewer played a marketing manager at a fictional company. He spent the first stretch diagnosing the client's business before mapping needs to Google Ads products and handling objections with product facts. Leadership and Googleyness questions followed. He notes that for other business roles this slot becomes open-ended questions or mini-cases, and for engineering roles a whiteboard interview.Covered: Sales roleplay, Case study, Domain knowledge, Behavioral
3Onsite panel, three back-to-back interviewsPanelThree 30-to-45-minute interviews covering all four Google signals in no fixed order. The first, with his prospective manager, was a General Cognitive Ability round built on an open estimation and reasoning problem of the 'how would you increase profit per table at a restaurant' type, judged on logical structure rather than the answer. The second, with a manager from another team, was role-related knowledge on sales and digital marketing plus past-experience questions answered in STAR form. The third covered leadership and Googleyness.Covered: Market sizing, Domain knowledge, Behavioral, STAR stories

SRE, Systems

Not selected

unknown. 3 rounds. Shared by dijit on hn, 2020-05-09

1Initial recruiter conversationPhone screenRecruiter asked basic questions to identify weak areas and advised what to prepare for the next round.
2Phone interviewsPhone screenTwo phone interviews, about an hour each on different days: one on programming skills, another on Linux internals and debugging.Covered: Programming, Linux internals
3Onsite interviewsTechnicalAbout five one-hour onsite interviews covering distributed systems design, Linux internals (e.g. implementing 'ls'), scripting/coding problems, and a culture-fit round. One interviewer pushed back on using Postgres instead of building a custom database.Covered: Distributed systems, Linux internals, Scripting

SRE, Systems

Not selected

unknown. 3 rounds. Shared by dijit on hn, 2020-02-24

1Initial recruiter conversationPhone screenRecruiter asked basic questions to identify weak areas and advised what to prepare for the next round.
2Phone interviewsPhone screenTwo phone interviews, about an hour each on different days: one on programming skills, another on Linux internals and debugging.Covered: Programming, Linux internals
3Onsite interviewsTechnicalAbout five one-hour onsite interviews covering distributed systems design, Linux internals (e.g. implementing 'ls'), scripting/coding problems, and a culture-fit round. One interviewer pushed back on using Postgres instead of building a custom database.Covered: Distributed systems, Linux internals, Scripting

Software Engineer

Not selected

unknown. 3 rounds. Shared by Leherenn on hn, 2020-02-24

1Recruiter callPhone screenRecruiter explained the process, asked for self-ratings and pointed to practice sites.Covered: Self-rated skills
2Phone screenPhone screenFriendly interviewer. Feedback was strong communication but slow pace.Covered: Coding
3Second phone screenPhone screenExtra round to break the tie, with a similar result and a rejection.Covered: Coding

Software Engineer

Received an offer

unknown. 3 rounds. Shared by panda88888 on hn, 2019-07-31

1Foobar challengeOnline assessmentTimed multi-level online programming challenge. Finishing level three earned a phone interview.Covered: Algorithms, Python
2Phone interviewPhone screenTechnical phone interview.
3OnsiteTechnicalOnsite whiteboard algorithm interviews.Covered: Data structures, Algorithms

Senior Software Engineer

Not selected

Senior, New York, NY. 3 rounds. Shared by retiredcoder on hn, 2019-04-24

1Onsite loopTechnicalSeven or eight engineer interviews, mostly positive with two uncertain.
2Team matchingHiring managerPhone calls with prospective teams, then a meeting with a tech lead on the chosen team.
3Final reviewFinalA senior leader declined the packet despite team support.

Site Reliability Engineer

Not selected

unknown. 3 rounds. Shared by nimbius on hn, 2018-04-26

1OnsiteTechnicalIncluded open-ended puzzles such as a moon datacenter and counting cans in a bus.Covered: Estimation puzzles, Brain teasers
2Phone screenPhone screenPassed between several recruiters before a disorganized technical screener.
3Technical follow-upPhone screenFollow-up technical review on C and shared libraries.Covered: C programming, Linux dynamic libraries

Role not stated

Not selected

unknown. 3 rounds. Shared by ifhd on hn, 2017-10-25

1Phone screensPhone screenInitial screens before onsite.
2OnsiteTechnicalIn-person loop. Rejection came two weeks later.
3Re-application screensPhone screenOn reapplying, had to repeat phone screens and withdrew.

Frontend Engineer

Not selected

unknown. 3 rounds. Shared by duderific on hn, 2016-12-16

1InterviewsTechnicalPassed the interview loop.
2Team matchingHiring managerSeveral teams reviewed the packet and the payments team wanted to hire.
3Hiring committeeFinalCommittee asked follow-up questions on degree and GPA, then declined.Covered: Education, GPA

Site Reliability Engineer

Not selected

unknown. 3 rounds. Shared by icedchai on hn, 2016-10-14

1Recruiter screenPhone screenSimple scripted questions.
2Engineer phone interviewPhone screenA challenging technical call.
3OnsiteTechnicalIn-person loop that did not lead to an offer.

Role not stated

Received an offer

unknown. 3 rounds. Shared by shaftway on hn, 2015-06-12

1Phone screenPhone screenInitial screen after which the recruiter decided to proceed.
2Onsite interviewsTechnicalFive interviews answered mostly in pseudo-code, with mixed self-assessed performance.Covered: Java iterators, Statistics, Big data, Pseudo-code
3Hiring committeeFinalScores reviewed by committee, then offer committee and team placement.

Site Reliability Engineer

Received an offer

unknown. 3 rounds. Shared by B-Con on hn, 2014-03-16

1Interview preparationPhone screenRecruiting provided detailed expectations, reading lists, practice exercises and a video coaching session with SREs.
2OnsiteTechnicalSeries of interviews focused on engineering skills rather than trivia.
3Large systems designSystem designHardest round to prepare for, with the least prep material provided.Covered: System design

Role not stated

Outcome not shared

Internship. 3 rounds. Shared by Morgawr on hn, 2014-02-23

1Full-time onsiteTechnicalFailed a full-time onsite a year earlier, which later counted toward internship eligibility.
2Internship phone screeningPhone screenExtra screen after recruiter mix-ups, before moving to project matching.
3Project matchingHiring managerMatching with intern projects late in the season.

Role not stated

Not selected

unknown. 3 rounds. Shared by ensmotko on hn, 2013-08-20

1Recruiter screensPhone screenScreening calls with two different European recruiters.
2First technical phone interviewPhone screenAlgorithm questions where the optimal solution was reached after some struggle.
3Second technical phone interviewPhone screenSimilar round with a few mistakes. Rejected weeks later as a close call.

Software Engineer

Not selected

unknown, Kirkland, WA. 3 rounds. Shared by evanlong on hn, 2012-02-26

1HR phone screenPhone screenInitial HR phone screen for a software engineering role.
2Technical phone screenPhone screenTechnical phone screen with an engineer.
3Onsite interviewsTechnicalFour onsite interviews with two developers and two testers. One question asked for an efficient way to count set bits in a 32-bit integer, another covered video and audio synchronization challenges in Chrome.Covered: Bit manipulation, Browser internals

Role not stated

Not selected

unknown. 3 rounds. Shared by larryfreeman on hn, 2011-06-18

1Phone screenPhone screenInitial phone screen.
2Onsite interviewTechnicalAll-day in-person interview.
3Business idea presentationPresentationInvited back six months later to pitch a business idea (a rich-text wiki), which was ultimately passed on.

Role not stated

Received an offer

Internship. 3 rounds. Shared by clawr on hn, 2011-03-29

1On-campus interviewTechnicalFirst technical interview held on campus.
2Second technical interviewTechnicalAnother technical round a month later, after which the candidate entered the intern pool.
3Host interviewHiring managerConversation with the eventual manager that led to an offer about two months after the first round.

Site Reliability Engineer

Not selected

New grad. 3 rounds. Shared by X-Istence on hn, 2010-09-15

1Phone interview 1Phone screenRepeated, rephrased questions over a poor line plus Unix and data structure questions.Covered: Unix trivia, Data structures
2Phone interview 2TechnicalDiscussed past projects and wrote code.Covered: Resume projects, Coding
3Further phone interviewsPhone screenFive phone interviews in total before a rejection.

Software Engineer / Systems Administrator

Not selected

New grad. 3 rounds. Shared by X-Istence on hn, 2010-03-24

1Phone interviewsPhone screenFive phone interviews across three positions after recruiter outreach.Covered: Software engineering, System administration
2Phone coding interviewTechnicalFirst coding call went badly due to a poor line and mixed-up syntax.Covered: Pseudocode
3Final phone coding interviewTechnicalCoded in a shared Google Doc and felt it went well. No onsite followed.

Systems Engineer

Outcome not shared

Senior, Mountain View, CA. 3 rounds. Shared by illumin8 on hn, 2010-03-19

1Recruiter phone screenPhone screenInitial recruiter call.
2Technical phone screenTechnicalSecond, technical phone screen.
3OnsiteTechnicalIn-person interviews expecting error-free code on a whiteboard. Hiring for the role was then paused.Covered: Whiteboard coding, Scripting

Associate Product Manager intern

Not selected

Internship. 3 rounds. Shared by endtime on hn, 2009-03-10

1On-campus PM interviewsCase studyTwo non-technical interviews with product managers on campus.Covered: Product design, Consumer experience, Industry trends
2PM interviewCase studyFurther PM interview including improving ad-network performance and suggesting keywords to advertisers.Covered: Advertising products, Keyword suggestion
3Written essayTake-homeThree-page essay reviewed by the hiring committee as the final step.Covered: Product thinking

Software Engineer (Android / mobile)

Received an offer

Experienced. 3 rounds. Shared by Yash Nagayach on youtube

1DSA rounds (three)TechnicalThree algorithm rounds where the interviewer expected the candidate to think out loud and justify every data-structure choice, not just produce working code.Covered: Data structures & algorithms
2Googliness roundBehavioralA behavioral round Google labels googliness.Covered: Behavioral
3System design roundSystem designA mobile-app-focused system design round (as opposed to the more common backend-oriented one), for which the candidate found few dedicated resources.Covered: System design

Role not stated

Outcome not shared

Senior. 2 rounds. Shared by fatnoah on hn, 2026-03-04

1System design 1System designDesign the upload path for a large video platform.Covered: Video upload pipeline
2System design 2System designReplace a high-volume logging component under tight space limits without running old and new side by side.Covered: Logging, Migration, Correctness

STEP Intern

Not selected

Internship. 2 rounds. Shared by GeeksforGeeks contributor (unnamed) on gfg, 2025-11-16

1Technical (45 min)TechnicalA medium recursion problem solved in time, followed by a request to re-implement the same idea with a different data structure, which she also handled.Covered: Data structures & algorithms
2Technical (45 min)TechnicalAn easier base problem where the real test was the follow-up: optimising the brute force and covering edge cases. She got the brute force out cleanly but stalled on the optimisation and went quiet while stuck, which she saw afterwards as the fatal mistake.Covered: Data structures & algorithms, Debugging

Role not stated

Outcome not shared

unknown. 2 rounds. Shared by neilv on hn, 2025-10-21

1Technical interviewTechnicalA tough, adversarial-feeling session preceding lunch.
2LunchBehavioralFriendly employee hosted lunch in the cafeteria and introduced a visitor with related research interests.Covered: Culture

Role not stated

Outcome not shared

Manager. 2 rounds. Shared by vidarh on hn, 2025-08-01

1Technical interviewTechnicalTrick-style problems plus obscure questions on early Unix inode layout.Covered: Algorithms, Unix internals, Inodes
2Management interviewHiring managerOffered as the next step, but the candidate withdrew.

Product Manager L5 (AI/ML focus, India)

Outcome not shared

Experienced. 2 rounds. Shared by u/Longjumping-Buddy501 on reddit, 2025-07-10

1Product interviewTechnicalA conventional PM round which he felt went well, prompting the second round.Covered: Case study, Domain knowledge
2Vibe-coding build (45 min)TechnicalA format he had never seen documented anywhere and was not warned about: build a working AI application live inside the interview. He dived straight into an agent backend with tool calling, blanked on the implementation under stress and never produced a structure. In hindsight he thinks the round wanted a product-design approach, a short requirements doc turned into a prompt and then built in an AI app-builder.Covered: API design, Domain knowledge, Debugging

Software / Data Analytics Apprentice (Google India Apprenticeship 2025)

Not selected

Internship. 2 rounds. Shared by GeeksforGeeks contributor (unnamed) on gfg, 2025-02-19

1Online challenge (90 min)Online assessmentA HackerEarth-hosted test with two problems: a minimum-cost string transformation that needed DP, and an array-shrinking task collapsing duplicate elements into sums while preserving relative order. Both were solved.Covered: Dynamic programming, Arrays & strings
2Recruiter callPhone screenAbout two and a half months later, a recruiter asked for a self-introduction, his best language, how many practice problems he had solved and a self-rating on data structures, why he had applied to both the software and analytics tracks, and his data-science and AI background. He fumbled the introduction and was cut after this round.Covered: Resume deep-dive, Domain knowledge

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