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Meta interview notes, page 80 of 238

FAANG / Big Tech

Most of these Meta write-ups come from Software Engineers (1,194), then Data Scientists (489) and Product Managers (453). The most reported rounds are the technical phone screen (1,190), the product sense round (466), the system design round (255) and the behavioral / leadership round (205).

2377 interview notes · updated Jul 2026

Meta·Software Engineer·Onsite - Behavioral / Leadership

May 2026
Behavioral round at Meta for a software engineering role, focused entirely on how you handle unclear or shifting requirements. Pretty standard format but the question had some depth to it if you actually had a real story to tell.
  • Tell me about a project you worked on where the requirements were unclear, the constraints were unknown, or the priorities kept changing. Walk me through what made it ambiguous, what you did about it, and what happened in the end.

“I had a decent story for this but I fumbled the middle part where they want to hear how you actually reduced the ambiguity.”

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Meta·Software Engineer·Technical Phone Screen

May 2026
Meta SWE coding round, one problem the whole session. The question looked like a simple string cleanup at first glance but the O(n) constraint with cascading collapses is where things got real.
  • Given a string and an integer k (k >= 2), repeatedly remove every maximal contiguous group of identical characters whose length is at least k. After each removal, the string collapses and the process repeats until no more removals are possible. Return the final string. Design an O(n) time and O(n) space solution using a stack.

“I got the brute force out fast, simulate each pass until stable, but then they asked for O(n) and I kind of stared at the screen for a moment.”

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Meta·Product Manager·Onsite - Product Sense / Strategy

May 2026
Meta PM interview with a single product design question about building a mortgage app. Pretty open-ended, which sounds freeing until you're actually sitting there trying to figure out where to start.
  • How would you design a mortgage app?

“My first instinct was to jump straight into features, which was probably the wrong move.”

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Meta·Software Engineer·Technical Phone Screen

May 2026
Meta SWE coding round with a library operations simulation problem. Pretty straightforward setup but the details got tricky fast.
  • Given a list of library book operations (acquisitions, checkouts, and reclassifications), compute the total value for each checkout operation and return those values as a list.

“Looked simple at first glance.”

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Meta·Software Engineer·Onsite - Coding / Algorithms

May 2026
Meta coding round, two algorithm problems back to back. Both were medium-to-hard level and required solid reasoning about correctness, not just getting to a solution.
  • Given a string of only '(' and ')' characters, what is the minimum number of parentheses you need to insert (anywhere) to make it a valid, balanced string? Describe a linear-time algorithm and justify why it works.
  • Given strings s and t, find the shortest contiguous substring of s that contains every character of t with at least the same frequency. Return empty string if none exists. Walk through the algorithm, time and space complexity, and key edge cases.

“This one I actually felt okay about.”

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Meta·Software Engineer·Technical Phone Screen

May 2026
Meta SWE interview with a nested list depth-weighted sum problem. They wanted both DFS and BFS implementations plus a follow-up on inverting the weights, which honestly tripped me up more than the core problem did.
  • Given a nested collection of integers and other nested collections, compute a depth-weighted sum where each integer is multiplied by its depth (1-based). Implement both a DFS and a BFS solution and analyze the time and space complexity of each.
  • How would you adapt the solution if the weighting is inverted, meaning the deepest level gets weight 1 and shallower levels get higher weights?

“DFS felt natural, basically just recurse and pass the current depth down.”

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Meta·Software Engineer·Technical Phone Screen

May 2026
Meta software engineering interview with two algorithm problems. Nothing too wild but the second one had a wrinkle I didn't fully think through in time.
  • You have two integer arrays D and R of the same length n, where D[i] is the departure cost on day i and R[j] is the return cost on day j. Find indices i and j where i < j that minimize D[i] + R[j]. Return the minimum total cost and the pair of days. Also discuss complexity, correctness, and edge cases like n < 2 or ties.
  • Given an m x n binary grid where 0 is walkable and 1 is blocked, find any valid path from the top-left to the bottom-right cell moving only in four directions. Return the path as a list of coordinates, or indicate if none exists. Explain the algorithm, path reconstruction, and complexity.

“This one clicked pretty fast.”

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Meta·Software Engineer·Technical Phone Screen

May 2026
Meta SWE coding question, pretty straightforward dictionary manipulation problem. Nothing too wild but the efficiency angle made me think twice about how I was sorting.
  • Given a dictionary, write a function that iterates over its keys in ascending order and returns the corresponding values in that order.

“My first instinct was to just loop through the dict directly, which obviously doesn't give you sorted order.”

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Meta·Backend Engineer·Technical Phone Screen

May 2026
Meta backend interview with a binary search problem that looks straightforward on paper but has a few gotchas if you haven't seen it before. Nothing too wild, just needed to get the feasibility check right.
  • Given an array of log lengths and an integer k, find the maximum cut length L such that you can produce at least k pieces total, where each log yields floor(log_i / L) pieces. Return 0 if no valid positive L exists.

“Classic binary search on the answer.”

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Meta·Software Engineer·Onsite - Coding / Algorithms

May 2026
Meta SWE coding round with a multi-part maze problem that escalated pretty quickly. Five sub-questions on the same grid, ending with a cross-shaped bomb mechanic I hadn't seen before. Felt like a BFS warm-up that slowly turned into something nastier.
  • Given a maze grid where 0 is walkable and 1 is a wall, find the minimum number of steps from a start cell to a target cell moving in four directions. Return -1 if unreachable.
  • Same maze problem, but now also return one valid shortest path, not just the step count.
  • Count the total number of distinct shortest paths from start to target in the maze, modulo 1,000,000,007.
  • Allow breaking through up to k walls while traversing the maze. Find the minimum steps from start to target under this constraint.
  • You now have b bombs instead of wall passes. Detonating a bomb at your current cell permanently destroys walls in a full cross shape extending to the grid boundary in all four directions. Find the minimum steps from start to target.

“Standard BFS, got it fast.”

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