Google Interview Questions — Page 1

Google·Data Scientist·Technical Phone Screen

Sep 2023

Google Data Scientist interview that jumped between two pretty different problem spaces: designing a database for a video streaming startup, then pivoting to e-commerce SQL and some Pandas work. Felt like a sampler platter, which was both good and bad.

Design a relational database schema for a video streaming company. What tables would you create, what are the key columns, and how do the tables relate to each other?
Given a transactions table with user, order, and product columns, write a SQL query to find the pair of products most frequently bought together in the same order.
Using Python and Pandas, how would you add a new column to a DataFrame where the values are derived from conditions applied to existing columns?

“I went with the usual suspects: users, content, subscriptions, watch history, maybe a separate table for genres or tags.”

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Google·Software Engineer·Onsite - Multi Round

May 2024

Four years in, got recruited for a Google SWE-ML role and opted for the ML system design track over DSA. Two remote screening rounds both came back positive, and now I'm sitting here the night before in-person DSA rounds, low-key terrified because coding has never been my strong suit.

Design an AI-powered coding assistant system.
Tell me about a challenge you faced and how you handled it.

“The recruiter kept saying to expect 'ML questions' which was vague enough that I over-indexed on my own domain specialization.”

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Google·Software Engineer·Onsite - Multi Round

Jul 2024

Went through a full Google loop for a software engineer role, three rounds total plus a phone screen and OA. The coding rounds felt solid but the final round with the hiring manager threw a system design curveball I wasn't expecting, and I made a couple of embarrassing DB design mistakes that are still haunting me while I wait for results.

String manipulation problem involving hashmaps and a greedy approach, with tight space constraints. Leetcode hard difficulty.
Sliding window combined with a priority queue to solve an optimization problem.
Standard core computer science conceptual questions covering data structures and CS fundamentals.
Describe your biggest technical challenge from past work, and explain it in deeper technical detail when asked.
Design a work allocation system: cover the data model, consistency mechanisms, core allocation algorithm, and how it scales to tens of thousands of allocations.
Behavioral questions from the hiring manager covering how you handle various work situations.

“Didn't get the optimal solution right away, took a few nudges.”

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Google·Software Engineer·Hiring Manager Screen

Aug 2024

Got through the Google SWE loop and landed a team match call with a hiring manager that went pretty well, but now I'm stuck in limbo waiting on headcount decisions with my recruiter out of office.

Walk me through a distributed systems project you've worked on.

“They went pretty deep on this.”

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Google·Software Engineer·Technical Phone Screen

Aug 2024

Two virtual rounds with Google for a Software Engineer role, technical and culture fit, both in back-to-back days. Passed the culture fit but got rejected on the technical side after a compilation error in incomplete code tanked the whole thing.

Given a sparse bit array and a query function that returns whether any 1 exists in a subrange, find the positions of all 1s in the array.

“Started with divide and conquer, recursively narrowing down ranges using the query function.”

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Google·Software Engineer·Onsite - Multi Round

Sep 2024

Went through the Google SWE onsite in September, two coding rounds back to back. One was manageable, the other felt like a brain teaser from another dimension. Still waiting to hear back and trying not to read too much into the silence.

Given a graph, implement a traversal to solve a medium-difficulty problem.
Given an array split into partitions, find an optimal solution using binary search, and then mathematically prove your solution runs better than O(n).
Describe a situation that demonstrates your fit with the company's values and collaborative working style.

“Felt pretty solid here.”

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Google·Software Engineer·Onsite - System Design / Architecture

Mar 2025

Google SWE system design round, March R1. Coded up a solution for the Tic-Tac-Toe problem but got rejected. The lesson I took away was that I should've talked through my approach before jumping into code.

Design a Tic-Tac-Toe system that supports k players on an n x n board. A player wins by placing 3 consecutive marks in a line, regardless of board size. After each move, the system should return the current game status, e.g. which player won or if the game is over.

“I just started coding without really syncing with the interviewer on the approach first.”

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Google·Software Engineer·Onsite - Multi Round

Apr 2025

Went through two rounds at Google for a software engineering role, four coding interviews total across both rounds plus a Googleyness chat. Most of it went well but one interview in the second round left me spiraling because I fumbled an edge case at the end and the interviewer basically said let's just move on.

Coding problem requiring both a brute force and an optimized solution.
Two coding problems back to back, both solved optimally within the interview.
Single coding problem where the main logic was solved but edge case handling was incomplete.

“Needed a hint or two to get to the optimal but did get there.”

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Google·Software Engineer·Technical Phone Screen

Apr 2025

Interviewed for a software engineer role at Google with about two weeks to prep after a recruiter reached out in late April. The phone screen had one algorithmic question and I fumbled it badly enough that they passed on me. Twelve month cooldown now, which stings.

Given a binary tree with weighted edges, find the minimum cost to disconnect the root from all leaf nodes by cutting edges along root-to-leaf paths.

“My first instinct was memoization and I pitched an N-squared solution.”

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Google·Software Engineer·Onsite - Multi Round

Apr 2025

Went through four rounds at Google for a software engineering role, two remote and two onsite, and I'm still waiting on a decision after more than a month. The rounds ranged from string manipulation to a genuinely weird chessboard API problem that I hadn't seen anything like before. Mixed feelings about how it went.

String manipulation coding problem: write clean, efficient code for a string processing task, with attention to memory usage for large-scale inputs.
Given a list of airports with flight arrival and departure times, find valid travel routes using graph traversal.
On an n x n chessboard with n-1 rooks placed so no two share a row or column, find the empty row and column using only a countRook(a, b, c, d) API that returns how many rooks fall within a given rectangle. Minimize the number of API calls.
Behavioral and culture fit discussion covering how you work, handle challenges, and align with the company's values.

“I solved it but made a rookie mistake with a char vector.”

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