Google software engineering interview questions

The Process

Five stages, and two of them happen after you stop interviewing

01

30 minPhone call

Recruiter screen

Mostly a routing call. The level the recruiter writes down decides which loop you sit, and Google is slower to move it afterwards than most companies.

Settle the level before the loop.
A down level after the onsite means a new packet and more weeks. Argue it now, with your scope on the table rather than your title.
Ask which product area you would join.
Search, Cloud, Ads and Android read the same official rubric very differently once you get to the onsite.
Nobody is negotiating pay yet.
Compensation comes from the committee outcome and the band, not from this call, so a number here can only cap you.

02

45 minGoogle Doc

Phone screen

One or two medium problems typed into a shared Google Doc with no autocomplete, no execution and no test runner. The scoring is about how you reason out loud.

Practise in a plain document.
Syntax you never notice in an editor becomes visible here. Write real code by hand a few times before you sit it.
Ask a clarifying question early.
Solving without asking anything is scored as a negative. Input size, ranges and edge cases are the cheap ones to ask.
The follow up is the real question.
Interviewers escalate on purpose to break your first solution. Expect it, and leave time for the second version.

03

4 to 5 roundsOne dayVirtual

The onsite loop

Two or three coding rounds, a system design round from L5 upward, and a Googleyness and Leadership round that since 2026 also carries a technical design conversation about a project you shipped.

Googleyness is a scored dimension.
The committee reads it next to your coding scores, so a strong coder with thin behavioural evidence fails the same way.
Comfort with ambiguity is the signal.
Problems arrive underspecified on purpose. Naming what you would clarify counts for more than guessing correctly.
Every round is written up separately.
Interviewers do not confer. One weak round with no explanation sits in the packet unanswered, so finish each one cleanly.

04

1 to 2 weeksNo candidate inputPacket only

Hiring committee

Senior Googlers who never met you score a written packet across four dimensions. The working bar is about 3.5 out of 4, which is why strong coders still get rejected.

You are judged on the write ups.
Your interviewers become your advocates in text only. Anything you said that nobody wrote down does not exist here.
Referrals sit inside the packet.
Referral notes and your resume are read alongside the scores. A specific referral is worth several warm ones.
A rejection here is the bar, not you.
The committee protects a fixed standard rather than filling a role, which is why re-applying later works more often than people expect.

05

1 to 6 weeksYou get a say

Team match

Clearing the committee is not an offer. You then talk to teams with open headcount, and candidates do sit in this queue for weeks without landing one.

Ask how long the queue is.
Match times swing with headcount. A recruiter who will not give you a range is telling you something useful.
Treat each match call as a round.
The manager can decline you after the committee approved you, so the conversation is still a decision, not a formality.
You are allowed to decline a team.
Taking the first team that says yes is how people end up on work they did not want. Two conversations is normal.

Levels and Pay

Google front loads the stock, and that changes the maths

Pick a level to see how the package splits, what changes by city, and what the loop actually asks of you at that band.

Bay Area

New York

Seattle

London

Level	Experience	Total comp
Software Engineer IIL3Entry	0 to 2 yrs	~$211K
Software Engineer IIIL4Mid	2 to 5 yrs	~$310K
Senior EngineerL5Senior	5 to 9 yrs	~$425K
Staff EngineerL6Staff	9 to 12 yrs	~$580K
Senior StaffL7Sr Staff	12+ yrs	~$950K

Live Question Feed

What Google is asking right now

84 questions · new ones added every 7 days

84 Verified

CODING

Find the longest increasing subarray. Then answer what changes if you are allowed to replace exactly one element.

Phone screen

45 min

Google Doc

Reported 14 times

Open

SYSTEM DESIGN

Design an index that serves ranked results under 200 milliseconds at a hundred thousand queries a second.

Locked

GOOGLEYNESS

Tell me about a technical disagreement you lost, and what you did the week afterwards.

Locked

CODING

Given meeting intervals, return the minimum rooms needed, then return the room assignment for each meeting.

Locked

SYSTEM DESIGN

Design the upload and transcoding pipeline for a video platform serving billions of views a day.

Locked

CODING

Shortest transformation between two words, changing one letter at a time, bounded by a dictionary.

Locked

BEHAVIORAL

Describe something you had to learn from nothing on a deadline, and how you knew it was working.

Locked

CODING

Model a snake game with constant time moves, food generation and collision detection.

Locked

GOOGLEYNESS

When did you change your mind because somebody junior to you turned out to be right?

Locked

83 more questions available

The exact questions Google is asking this week, tagged by round and difficulty.

Unlock All 84 Questions

Each question stays in the bank for 14 days, so everything here was asked in the last 14 days. Candidates who see them first pass at 3.2 times the normal rate.

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The Unfair Advantage

Why this actually works

01

Real questions, not guesses

Collected from engineers who sat the loop, then cross validated against other intel sources.

02

Fresh every week

The database updates every 7 days, so you never study stale problems.

03

Covers every round

Coding, system design, the Googleyness round, hiring committee signals and team match calls.

04

120+ companies tracked

Also interviewing at Meta, Amazon or OpenAI? We have their questions too.

05

Difficulty and pattern data

Tagged by difficulty, round and category, so you know where prep time goes.

06

Candidate verified only

Reported by a candidate, then cross verified against multiple data points.

3.2×

Higher pass rate

120+

Companies tracked

3.2K+

Engineers using this

FAQ

Common questions

How are the questions sourced?

Directly from engineers who interviewed at Google, then cross validated against other intel sources into a stack ranked list.

How often are questions updated?

We add new questions every 7 days and retire each one after 14 days, so the bank turns over twice in the window it covers. Google rotates its coding pool quickly, and the Googleyness prompts shift between hiring waves.

Does Google ask LeetCode questions?

Yes, medium to hard, but typed into a plain document with no autocomplete and no way to run the code. The follow up that breaks your first answer is the real test.

Can I use AI tools in the interview?

Not your own, and not in the standard rounds. In 2026 Google is piloting a Gemini-assisted code comprehension round for junior and mid level US roles, where the model is provided and using it is the point.

What is the hiring committee?

Senior Googlers who never met you, scoring your written packet across four dimensions. The working bar is about 3.5 out of 4, which is why strong coders still get cut.

What does Google pay a Software Engineer III?

Around $310K in the Bay Area, or about £149K in London. Roughly 30 percent is GSUs, and they vest 38, 32, 20 then 10 percent.

How long does the process take?

Six to twelve weeks. The loop is the quick part. The hiring committee and then team matching are what stretch it out.

Is this just for Google?

No. GothamLoop covers 120+ companies including Meta, Amazon, OpenAI, Microsoft and Apple.

The Google interview cheat code nobody talks about

Five stages, and two of them happen after you stop interviewing

Recruiter screen

Phone screen

The onsite loop

Hiring committee

Team match

Google front loads the stock, and that changes the maths

What Google is asking right now

Why this actually works

Real questions, not guesses

Fresh every week

Covers every round

120+ companies tracked

Difficulty and pattern data

Candidate verified only

Common questions

Pricing plan

Company Interview Guides