Coupang interview questions

Received an offer4 rounds

1. 1
   Coding / DSATechnical

   Subsequence-counting question on a source pattern in a target string; interviewer expected a working DFS + memoization solution.

   Covered · Dynamic programming, Arrays & strings

2. 2
   BehaviouralBehavioral

   Taken by an engineering director; multiple past-project probes on multi-solution tradeoffs and hard engineering decisions.

   Covered · Leadership Principles, Past projects

3. 3
   LLD / HLDSystem design

   Design a Bookshop system end-to-end: entities, APIs, inventory strong-consistency, availability, and extensibility to other item types.

   Covered · OOP, API design, System design

4. 4
   DSATechnical

   Two matrix-traversal problems (counter-clockwise spiral and diagonal traversal) with working code expected.

   Covered · Arrays & strings

Shared by anonymous_user on leetcode · 2025-03-31

Received an offer53 LPA base + 12.5L relocation + 5.3 LPA variable + 62L stock over 4 years (Bangalore)1 round

1. 1
   Full loop (unspecified round breakdown)Technical

   Poster shared level, offer numbers and Bangalore location but did not enumerate per-round content.

   Covered · Data structures & algorithms, System design

Shared by anonymous_user on leetcode · 2024-10-25

Not selected4 rounds

1. 1
   Hiring ManagerHiring manager

   Situational and past-impact questions; HM pushed back on several answers.

   Covered · Past projects, Behavioral

2. 2
   Coding / DSATechnical

   LC-medium stack + arithmetic problem; interviewer wanted not just asymptotically optimal but the single best solution, with full working code and test cases.

   Covered · Arrays & strings

3. 3
   HLDSystem design

   Design an e-commerce system end-to-end.

   Covered · System design, Scalability

4. 4
   LLDLow-level design

   Design ATM functionality; interfaces and classes were expected, driver class ran out of time.

   Covered · OOP, Low-level design

Shared by anonymous_user on leetcode · 2025-06-13

Outcome not shared1 round

1. 1
   Phone ScreenPhone screen

   60-minute call with a Korean interviewer: implement a min-stack in O(1). Candidate went with the space-optimised variant; interviewer expected the auxiliary-stack version and was not convinced by the alternative approach.

   Covered · Data structures & algorithms, OOP

Shared by debmalyapan53 on leetcode · 2025-09-23

Not selected1 round

1. 1
   Phone ScreenPhone screen

   60 minutes: find the minimum distance between the two closest islands in a 0/1 grid using 4-directional movement (BFS/multi-source BFS style problem).

   Covered · Graphs, Arrays & strings

Shared by debmalyapan53 on leetcode · 2025-11-13

Not selected4 rounds

1. 1
   Interview 1: System DesignSystem design

   Design an A/B testing system; interviewer was hunting for a very specific solution shape.

   Covered · System design

2. 2
   Interview 2: System DesignSystem design

   Design a distributed file system.

   Covered · System design

3. 3
   Interview 3: Low-level DesignLow-level design

   Design a parking-lot OOP model.

   Covered · OOP, Low-level design

4. 4
   Interviews 4-5: Culture fitBehavioral

   Two separate VP-level culture-fit conversations.

   Covered · Behavioral, Leadership Principles

Shared by angadp on leetcode · 2024-10-16

Not selected3 rounds

1. 1
   Coding round 1Technical

   Given a stream of like/dislike events on products, return the currently most-liked and most-disliked product at any query point (design + heap/ordered-map style question).

   Covered · Data structures & algorithms

2. 2
   Coding round 2Technical

   2D grid where each cell encodes a direction (up/down/left/right); determine whether you can reach the destination from a source by following cell directions.

   Covered · Graphs, Arrays & strings

3. 3
   Design roundSystem design

   Design a distributed job scheduler.

   Covered · System design, Concurrency

Shared by anonymous_user on leetcode · 2025-02-12

Not selected3 rounds

1. 1
   CodingTechnical

   Implement an in-memory file system (createFile, createFolder, ls, getContent, addContent). Follow-up: Jump Game I, approach only.

   Covered · Low-level design, OOP, Arrays & strings

2. 2
   Machine Coding LLDLow-level design

   Design a shipment-label printing service. No UML; requirement clarification then straight into code with focus on OOP concepts and design patterns.

   Covered · Low-level design, OOP

3. 3
   HLDSystem design

   Design an internal monitoring and alerting system.

   Covered · System design

Shared by anonymous_user on leetcode · 2025-03-14

Outcome not shared4 rounds

1. 1
   Coding round 1Technical

   Graph problem about identifying trees within a graph.

   Covered · Graphs

2. 2
   Coding round 2Technical

   Implement an in-memory file system: create directory, create/append file with content, cat file, list directory contents lexicographically (mirrors LC 1166 Design File System).

   Covered · Low-level design, OOP

3. 3
   System designSystem design

   Design an international order-tracking service across multiple third-party carriers with status and location history exposed to the end user.

   Covered · System design, API design

4. 4
   Managerial roundHiring manager

   Past-project deep dive plus standard behavioural questions.

   Covered · Past projects, Behavioral

Shared by anonymous_user on leetcode · 2025-05-05

Not selected5 rounds

1. 1
   Coding 1Technical

   DP-on-graph problem.

   Covered · Dynamic programming, Graphs

2. 2
   Coding 2Technical

   Two matrix-parsing and traversal questions; time expired before the second could be fully coded.

   Covered · Arrays & strings

3. 3
   Design 1: HLDSystem design

   Design a hotel/restaurant booking system; interviewer praised the design.

   Covered · System design

4. 4
   Bar RaiserBar raiser

   Past experience, projects, and leadership questions.

   Covered · Past projects, Leadership Principles

5. 5
   Hiring ManagerHiring manager

   Similar behavioural coverage to the bar-raiser round.

   Covered · Past projects, Leadership Principles

Shared by chandan16 on leetcode · 2025-10-09

Outcome not shared1 round

1. 1
   CodingTechnical

   60-minute code-pairing round: design a counter data structure supporting inc(key), dec(key), getMaxKey and getMinKey all in average O(1) time (All O(1) Data Structure style).

   Covered · Data structures & algorithms

Shared by anonymous_user on leetcode · 2025-10-27

Received an offerL6-1 offer (recruiter-provided)7 rounds

1. 1
   Phone ScreenPhone screen

   60 minutes: two behavioural questions plus one coding question with an in-depth follow-up on distributing the solution across a server fleet.

   Covered · Data structures & algorithms, System design, Behavioral

2. 2
   Onsite: Bar RaiserBar raiser

   Deep grill on prior projects and behavioural answers with heavy follow-ups; verdict Strong Hire.

   Covered · Past projects, Leadership Principles

3. 3
   Onsite: CodingTechnical

   Two behavioural questions followed by a Sort Colors variant with a strict one-pass, no-map expectation; verdict Weak Hire.

   Covered · Arrays & strings, Behavioral

4. 4
   Onsite: Hiring ManagerHiring manager

   Standard behavioural coverage (hardest project, role, conflict handling). HM disengaged early because the candidate's flagship project lacked distributed-systems scale challenges; verdict Strong Hire.

   Covered · Past projects, Behavioral

5. 5
   Onsite: CodingTechnical

   Two behavioural questions then two coding questions: minimum connections to join two friend networks on a grid (BFS), and count distinct island shapes (canonicalise-and-hash pattern); verdict Strong Hire.

   Covered · Graphs, Behavioral

6. 6
   Onsite: System DesignSystem design

   Two behavioural questions then design a ride-sharing service; interviewer expected far more depth.

   Covered · System design, Behavioral

7. 7
   Follow-up System DesignSystem design

   Additional design round to close out mixed feedback: design a blob-storage service like S3.

   Covered · System design, Scalability

Shared by anonymous_user on leetcode · 2025-11-22

Outcome not shared1 round

1. 1
   Machine Coding LLD (2 hours)Low-level design

   Two-hour laptop build of a simplified product bidding platform: user registration, sellers post products with a minimum price, buyers place/update/withdraw bids, sellers view bids in descending order and accept the highest. Expected structure: driver class + POJOs + services + in-memory 'repositories'; evaluated on class segregation, modularity, edge-case handling, and readability rather than UI, DB or persistence.

   Covered · OOP, Low-level design, API design

Shared by anonymous_user on leetcode · 2026-01-07

Outcome not shared1 round

1. 1
   Phone ScreeningPhone screen

   Merge K sorted lists. Candidate first offered a naive index-tracking solution, then optimised to a min-heap after a hint; both were coded on time.

   Covered · Data structures & algorithms

Shared by anonymous_user on leetcode · 2024-11-19

Not selected1 round

1. 1
   CodingTechnical

   String comparison / regex-pattern LC-hard problem. Candidate spotted the DP pattern but the solution had bugs.

   Covered · Dynamic programming, Arrays & strings

Shared by anonymous_user on leetcode · 2026-02-07

Not selected1 round

1. 1
   Coding roundTechnical

   Given two islands in an n x n 0/1 grid, find the minimum number of water cells to convert into land to connect the two islands (LC 934 Shortest Bridge).

   Covered · Graphs, Arrays & strings

Shared by anonymous_user on leetcode · 2026-02-12

Outcome not shared1 round

1. 1
   Coding roundTechnical

   Given n warehouses and a list of bidirectional edges, orient the edges into a directed graph so that the number of components (unreachable nodes) is minimised. Candidate explored indegree-based orientation and DSU + cycle detection.

   Covered · Graphs

Shared by dedshot on leetcode · 2026-08-07

Outcome not shared3 rounds

1. 1
   Online AssessmentOnline assessment

   Timed OA followed by a phone call clearing the candidate to onsite interviews two days later.

   Covered · Data structures & algorithms

2. 2
   OnsiteTechnical

   Coding and system-design rounds scheduled two days after the OA; poster asked the community for topic guidance.

   Covered · Data structures & algorithms, System design

3. 3
   Final HMHiring manager

   Final hiring-manager conversation; long silent gap on the decision (several weeks with no update).

   Covered · Behavioral, Past projects

Shared by rahulbalaji2002 on leetcode · 2026-06-18