Google Interview Questions

Google Coding & Algorithms Interview Questions

Practice 514 real Google interview questions for 2026. Covers Coding & Algorithms, Behavioral & Leadership, Analytics & Experimentation, Machine Learning, and System Design across Software Engineer, Data Scientist, Machine Learning Engineer, Product Manager, and Data Engineer roles — real questions from actual interviews with detailed solutions to accelerate interview preparation. This collection highlights the coding-first bar Google uses: expect heavy algorithmic work, role-related data and ML problems, a Googleyness/leadership round, and level-specific differences in what’s decisive. What’s distinctive: for Software Engineers you’ll see spatial and streaming algorithms, concurrency and async primitives, LLM-foundations and GPU-job scheduling, plus object-design problems like room assignment; Data Scientists are weighted toward causal experiments, funnel and product-metric diagnostics, bootstrap inference, and percentile/sampling algorithms; ML Engineers focus on transformer blocks, recommendation design and ranking cold-starts; PMs get Maps/Android and product-ideation tradeoffs plus throughput and revenue sizing. New-grad and intern tracks emphasize phone screens and virtual onsites; Google L4 typically keeps the loop coding-heavy while Google L5 expects stronger system-design and cross-team leadership signals. Use focused practice, mock interviews, and level-specific stories to prepare.

514 Questions 1 Company08.01.2026
Showing 20 results
Role
Google logo
Google
Easy
Software Engineer

Count Rectangle Coverage on a Grid

Count Rectangle Coverage on a Grid You are given an n x n grid initially filled with zeroes and a list of inclusive rectangular updates. Each rectangl...

Coding & Algorithms
42
2
343 people solved
Jul 21, 2026
Google logo
Google
Medium
Software Engineer

Deduplicate and Order Batch and Streaming Logs

Deduplicate and Order Batch and Streaming Logs A log is (timestamp, message), where timestamp is an integer and message is compared exactly. Input ord...

Coding & Algorithms
53
1
357 people solved
Jul 14, 2026
Google logo
Google
Hard
Software Engineer

Design a Scalable and Safe Agentic System

Design a Scalable and Safe Agentic System Design a service that accepts a user goal, lets an AI agent plan and invoke approved tools, and returns a re...

ML System Design
73
0
494 people solved
Jul 10, 2026
Google logo
Google
Medium
Software Engineer

Minimize Direction Violations in a Directed Road Network

Minimize Direction Violations in a Directed Road Network There are n nodes numbered from 0 through n - 1. Every input edge [u, v] has an original dire...

Coding & Algorithms
48
4
330 people solved
Jul 5, 2026
Google logo
Google
Medium
Software Engineer

Deduplicate and Order Batch and Streaming Logs

Deduplicate and Order Batch and Streaming Logs Each log entry is a pair (timestamp, message). Two entries are duplicates when their message strings ar...

Software Engineering Fundamentals
12
0
147 people solved
Jul 15, 2026
Google logo
Google
Medium
Software Engineer

Intervals with Exactly X Concurrent Meetings

Intervals with Exactly X Concurrent Meetings Given half-open meeting intervals and an integer X, return every maximal half-open time interval during w...

Coding & Algorithms
2
0
27 people solved
Aug 1, 2026
Google logo
Google
Medium
Data Scientist

Measure Bird Species Segregation

You are a data scientist analyzing bird observations from a forest. The ecology team wants to know whether different bird species are spatially segreg...

Statistics & Math
84
0
1580 people solved
May 28, 2026
Google logo
Google
Medium
Software Engineer

Count Connected Clusters of Two-Dimensional Points

Count Connected Clusters of Two-Dimensional Points Problem Implement count_clusters(points, radius). points is a list of two-dimensional integer coord...

Coding & Algorithms
2
1
32 people solved
Jul 27, 2026
Google logo
Google
Medium
Software Engineer

Determine All Players with Fixed Rankings

Determine All Players with Fixed Rankings There are N players and directed match results. A pair [a, b] means player a defeated player b. Results are ...

Coding & Algorithms
1
0
21 people solved
Aug 1, 2026
Google logo
Google
Medium
Software Engineer

Design a Billing-Token Rate Limiter for AI Agents

Design a Billing-Token Rate Limiter for AI Agents Design a rate limiter that controls the number of billing tokens consumed by AI-agent requests. Requ...

System Design
1
0
21 people solved
Aug 1, 2026
Google logo
Google
Medium
Software Engineer

Handle Conflict, Expanded Scope, Risk, and Team Culture

Handle Conflict, Expanded Scope, Risk, and Team Culture Prepare four behavioral examples that demonstrate judgment and leadership without assuming for...

Behavioral & Leadership
19
0
154 people solved
Jul 4, 2026
Google logo
Google
Hard
Software EngineerSenior+ Locked

Design a Task Scheduler for Opaque Long-Running GPU Jobs ("Design Sora")

This system design question evaluates a candidate's ability to architect a distributed job scheduler and orchestrator for expensive, long-running, GPU...

System Design
82
0
562 people solved
Jun 14, 2026
Google logo
Google
Medium
Software EngineerNew Grad Locked

Search a Pattern Across the Leaf Text of a Binary Tree

Search for a pattern across the left-to-right concatenation of binary-tree leaf strings, including matches that cross leaf boundaries. This algorithm ...

Coding & Algorithms
19
1
159 people solved
Jun 17, 2026
Google logo
Google
Medium
Software Engineer

Minimum Cars for Rental Requests

Minimum Cars for Rental Requests You receive rental requests, each with a unique request identifier, pickup time, and return time. Every request must ...

Coding & Algorithms
1
0
11 people solved
Aug 1, 2026
Google logo
Google
Easy
Software Engineer Locked

LLM Foundations: Architecture, Adaptation, and Steering

This question evaluates a candidate's conceptual understanding of large language model architecture, adaptation, and inference-time control. It probes...

Machine Learning
19
0
202 people solved
Jun 22, 2026
Google logo
Google
Medium
Software EngineerSenior+

Build a Custom CompletableFuture: Async Primitive and Parallel Array Processing

You are asked to design and implement, from scratch, a simplified asynchronous "future / promise" abstraction in the spirit of Java's CompletableFutur...

Software Engineering Fundamentals
22
0
154 people solved
Jun 29, 2026
Google logo
Google
Medium
Software Engineer Locked

Sliding Window Average After Dropping the Largest Values

Compute one average per fixed-size sliding window after removing exactly the largest k values, counting duplicates separately. Support negative number...

Coding & Algorithms
19
1
145 people solved
May 23, 2026
Google logo
Google
Medium
Software EngineerNew Grad Locked

Find the Most Frequent IP Addresses in a File Too Large for Memory

Design an exact, bounded-memory method for finding the most frequent IP addresses in a file far larger than RAM. Analyze memory and disk-I/O trade-off...

Software Engineering Fundamentals
5
0
47 people solved
Jun 17, 2026
Google logo
Google
Medium
Software EngineerNew Grad Locked

Match Tagged Problems to Skilled Programmers at Scale

Model tagged problems and skilled programmers as a bipartite matching problem, then extend the design to distributed and streaming workloads. The exer...

System Design
5
0
54 people solved
Jun 17, 2026
Google logo
Google
Medium
Software EngineerNew Grad Locked

Generate Every Ordered Sum Using Ones and Twos

Generate every ordered string of ones and twos whose digit values sum to a target integer, with no duplicates and lexicographic output. The problem te...

Coding & Algorithms
17
1
99 people solved
Jun 17, 2026

Frequently Asked Questions

How hard are Google interview questions and how does difficulty vary by level?
Google interview questions are challenging but predictable: they range from medium algorithmic problems for new grads to hard, system- and architecture-focused problems at senior levels. L3/new-grad interviews emphasize correct, clean code with solid complexity and edge-case handling; expect two to three coding rounds plus a Googleyness/leadership conversation. L4 requires optimal solutions, clearer trade-off communication, and sometimes a system-design or domain round. L5 raises the bar on system design, scalability, ownership, and leadership impact. Non-SWE roles shift emphasis toward statistics, experiment design, or model-building depending on the job.
What does the Google interview process look like and where do these 514 questions appear?
The typical loop starts with a recruiter screen, one or more phone or virtual coding screens, then a virtual or in-person onsite loop of 3–5 forty-five minute interviews: mostly coding, plus a Googleyness/leadership behavioral round and usually one domain or system-design session for mid and senior roles. The 514-question corpus covers those stages: phone-screen style coding, onsite deep-coding, system-design prompts, analytics/experiment questions for data roles, ML implementation prompts, and product-spec behavioral cases. Hiring committee review, level calibration, and team match happen after the loop and extend timelines by several weeks.
How should I schedule my preparation and how much time do I need to prepare effectively?
Plan prep based on level and role: new grads should spend 4–6 weeks focused on core data structures, algorithm patterns, and 4–6 polished STAR stories. Mid-level L4 candidates should budget 6–10 weeks, adding system design and production-readiness topics plus mock interviews. L5 and above need 8–12+ weeks emphasizing architecture, trade-offs, and leadership narratives. Break weeks into coding practice, timed mocks, system-design sprints, and role-specific work (experiments for DS, model lifecycle for MLE). Run at least 6–10 realistic mock interviews and iterate on communication and edge-case testing.
What specific subtopics and recurring themes should I expect by role at Google?
For Software Engineer interviews expect spatial and streaming geometry problems (counting or removing points within distance), concurrency and async primitives, deterministic task ordering and schedulers, calendar/free-slot algorithms, boolean-expression fixes, array/subarray patterns, and small-system OOD prompts like dorm room assignment. Data Scientist questions concentrate on causal and experiment design, funnel and product-metric computation, unbiased upgrade experiments, bootstrap and percentile estimation from buckets, sampling algorithms, and applied modeling like shot-conversion. Machine Learning Engineer rounds emphasize transformer/LLM building blocks and trade-offs, recommendation and ranking cold-start strategies, weighted sampling, and implementation details.
Any standout tips and common pitfalls, including level-specific advice (L3, L4, L5) and intern/new-grad notes?
Start by matching preparation to level: L3/new-grad must deliver correct, well-tested code and clear complexity; L4 must reach optimal solutions, explain trade-offs, and show production thinking; L5 must demonstrate architecture, scaling trade-offs, and cross-team impact. For interns/new-grads expect a phone coding screen followed by a virtual onsite; practice timed screens and basic system thinking. Across levels, talk through examples, define constraints, test edge cases, and avoid premature optimization or vague assumptions. Prepare 4–6 STAR stories for Googleyness, and don’t overlook clear, testable code and thought-out system trade-offs.

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