Airbnb Software Engineer Interview Questions
Practice the exact questions companies are asking right now.
Allocate refund across payments
Question Given a list of completed payment transactions (each with payment method, date, and amount) and a refund amount R, write an algorithm that is...
Design scalable notification system
System Design: Low-Latency, Multi-Channel Notification Platform You are asked to design a scalable, reliable notification system that can send message...
Design Connect-N winner detector
Question Design a data structure for the Connect-N game: pieces are dropped into a column (occupying the lowest empty cell). Implement move(column, pl...
Solve palindrome pairs and key path
Question LeetCode 336. Palindrome Pairs; LeetCode 864. Shortest Path to Get All Keys https://leetcode.com/problems/palindrome-pairs/description/ https...
Review Python geodata code
Question You are given a Python codebase that performs geolocation data processing. Conduct a thorough code review: identify readability, correctness,...
Find valid split-stay listing combinations
You are building a feature that suggests a split stay: a guest stays in one home for the first part of a trip, then switches to a second home for the ...
Design a fast host listing metrics page
Design the backend for a host (landlord) listings page. User flow: - Host opens a page showing many of their listings. - Host selects a date range. - ...
Answer cross-team delivery and values questions
You are in a behavioral/values interview. Prepare structured answers (use STAR or similar) for prompts like: 1) Cross-team delivery issue - Describe a...
Design a user activity query system
Problem Design a query system that allows internal consumers (e.g., customer support, risk/fraud, data analysts) to retrieve a given user's search act...
Design a scalable notification system
Problem Design a notification system for a company at Airbnb-like scale that can send notifications to different user types (e.g., customers/guests, h...
Find hotel pairs to cover a split stay
You are implementing a simplified “split stay” feature. Problem You are given: - n hotels (or listings), indexed 0..n-1. - For each hotel i, an unsort...
Simulate pouring water onto a 1D terrain
You are given a 1D terrain represented by an integer array heights, where heights[i] is the height of the column at index i. Part 1 — Render terrain W...
Design an extensible request Retryer
Problem You are building a small library component called a Retryer that wraps an operation (typically a network call) and retries it on failure. Requ...
Review a geospatial Python module
You receive a Python module that processes geospatial datasets (CSV/GeoJSON) to compute distances, cluster nearby points, and write summaries. Perform...
Walk through a project in detail
Walk Through a Significant Project Provide a deep-dive on one impactful project you led or contributed to. Cover: 1. Timeline: Start/end dates and maj...
Implement prioritized refund allocation engine
Implement a refund allocation function that takes: (a) a list of payments, each with a unique paymentId, method ∈ {CREDIT, CREDIT_CARD, PAYPAL}, ISO-8...
Explain why you want to join Airbnb
Behavioral Prompt: "Why Airbnb?" (Software Engineer) Context In a technical screen, you may be asked to concisely explain why you want to join Airbnb....
Design split-stay combinations API
Design an HTTP API for Two-Listing Split-Stay Search Context You are designing search for a travel marketplace that supports split stays across two li...
Describe your role, motivations, and values
Behavioral HR Screen: Self-Introduction, Current Role, Motivation for Change, and Cultural Fit Context You’re in an initial HR screen for a Software E...
Maximize reward by scheduling jobs
Given n jobs, each with a start time, end time, and reward, choose a subset of non-overlapping jobs to maximize total reward. Return the maximum rewar...