← Back to Directory

AppLovin

Large Enterprises

Screna has 12 AppLovin interview write-ups. The most reported round is the technical phone screen (8).

12 interview notes · updated Jul 2026

AppLovin·Software Engineer·Technical Phone Screen

Jun 2026
Interviewed for a software engineer role at Applovin and got a pretty standard grid pathfinding problem. Nothing that would trip up anyone who's done competitive programming or even just reviewed BFS before an interview.
  • Given a 2D grid with a start cell and a target cell, find the length of the shortest path between them following standard movement rules. Return a value indicating the path is unreachable if no valid path exists.

“Pretty much a textbook BFS question.”

View Post

AppLovin·Software Engineer·Hiring Manager Screen

Jun 2026
Hiring manager round at Applovin for a software engineer role, pure behavioral, nothing technical at all. Pretty short and straightforward from what I could tell.
  • Why did you choose to attend your school?
  • Why did you join your previous company?

“Not a question I expected from a tech company HM screen.”

View Post

AppLovin·Software Engineer·Technical Phone Screen

Jun 2026
Applovin SWE interview with a twist on a classic BST problem. Instead of just validating the tree, they wanted a count of violating nodes, which sounds like a small change but actually requires you to think more carefully about what you're tracking.
  • Given the root of a binary tree, instead of checking whether it's a valid BST, return the count of nodes that violate the BST property (where a node violates if its value falls outside the valid range implied by all its ancestors, counting each violating node only once).

“My first instinct was to just return a boolean and I had to stop myself.”

View Post

AppLovin·Backend Engineer·Technical Phone Screen

Jun 2026
Technical round at Applovin for a backend role. One coding problem, in-place constraint made it trickier than the problem itself.
  • Solve a LeetCode-style algorithmic problem (800s series) without using any extra space.

“The base problem wasn't too bad but the no-extra-space constraint is what got me.”

View Post

AppLovin·Software Engineer·Technical Phone Screen

May 2026
Got a coding question at Applovin that was basically a twist on a classic BST validation problem. Not the hardest thing in the world but the modification tripped me up a bit.
  • Given a binary tree, instead of just checking whether it's a valid BST, return the count of nodes that violate the BST property based on their valid range in an in-order traversal.

“My first instinct was to just do the standard recursive validation with a low/high range per node, which is right, but I kept wanting to return a boolean and had to mentally reset.”

View Post

AppLovin·Software Engineer·Technical Phone Screen

May 2026
Applovin SWE interview with a grid path counting problem. Pretty standard dynamic programming territory but they pushed into some interesting follow-up territory around 4-directional movement that tripped me up a bit.
  • Given an R x C grid with a start cell, an end cell, and some blocked cells, count the number of distinct paths from start to end. Movement is restricted to right and down only.

“Got through the core solution fine.”

View Post

AppLovin·Software Engineer·Technical Phone Screen

May 2026
Second round at Applovin for a software engineer role. The technical portion was a mini compiler problem paired with a topological sort question, which is a pretty specific combo I wasn't fully expecting.
  • Implement a mini compiler, incorporating topological sort as part of the solution.

“This one stung a bit.”

View Post

AppLovin·Software Engineer·Onsite - System Design / Architecture

May 2026
System design round at Applovin for a software engineer role. Just one question but it had enough surface area to go pretty deep if you let it.
  • How would you design a system for storing and serving videos at scale, similar to YouTube?

“Classic video storage question but I still fumbled the sequencing a bit.”

View Post

AppLovin·Software Engineer·Onsite - System Design / Architecture

May 2026
System design round at Applovin for a software engineer role, focused entirely on a ride-sharing matching and routing problem with a pretty specific constraint I hadn't seen before. The geometric angle made it more interesting than the usual 'design Uber' prompt.
  • Design a ride-sharing system like UberPool, specifically focused on matching and routing. The constraint is that a driver traveling from point S to point T on a Manhattan distance grid can only pick up additional riders if doing so adds zero extra distance to their total trip.

“This one took me a minute to internalize.”

View Post

AppLovin·Software Engineer·Onsite - System Design / Architecture

May 2026
System design round at Applovin where the whole thing was basically a deep dive into Uber Pool. Lots of moving parts and the matching algorithm piece got pretty hairy toward the end.
  • Design the Uber Pool feature with the goal of maximizing passengers picked up per ride, without increasing the detour distance for existing passengers. Cover request matching, driver dispatch, route updates, ETA calculations, and matching algorithm trade-offs at scale.

“This one is deceptively wide.”

View Post