Google Interview Questions

Google Coding & Algorithms Interview Questions

Practice 518 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.

518 Questions 1 Company08.01.2026
Showing 20 results
Role
Google logo
Google
Medium
Data Scientist

Demonstrate stakeholder communication and influence

Describe a time you influenced a cross-functional decision using data when stakeholders initially disagreed with your recommendation. Include: the dec...

Behavioral & Leadership
3
0
45 people solved
Oct 13, 2025
Google logo
Google
Easy
Data Scientist

Build a Next-Word Predictor

Implement a simple next-word model over tokenized training sentences. You need to write two functions: 1. train(sentences): receives a list of tokeniz...

Coding & Algorithms
9
1
81 people solved
Feb 8, 2026
Google logo
Google
Hard
Product Manager

Product Ideation with Street-View Car Images

Product Sense and Decision Making: Street View Images and Fair Delivery You are in a Product Manager interview. Work through two separate product prom...

Product / Decision Making
18
0
138 people solved
Jul 4, 2025
Google logo
Google
Medium
Product Manager

Explaining Technical Work to Non-Technical Stakeholders

Explain Technical Work to a Non-Technical Stakeholder Explain a recent project you led in plain language for a non-technical audience. The interviewer...

Behavioral & Leadership
16
0
70 people solved
Jul 4, 2025
Google logo
Google
Medium
Product Manager

Learning from Wrong Data

Behavioral Prompt: Decision-Making With Bad or Misleading Data Tell me about a time you made a significant decision based on incorrect or misleading d...

Behavioral & Leadership
18
0
70 people solved
Jul 4, 2025
Google logo
Google
Medium
Software Engineer

How to handle huge inputs?

In a coding interview, after solving an in-memory algorithmic problem, the interviewer asks: "What would you do if the input were extremely large?" Gi...

Software Engineering Fundamentals
5
0
48 people solved
May 13, 2025
Google logo
Google
Medium
Software Engineer

Handling an Ambiguous "Family Tree" Prompt

Behavioral/Leadership: Handling an Ambiguous "Family Tree" Prompt Context: In a technical screen, the interviewer says only "there is a family tree" a...

Behavioral & Leadership
2
0
52 people solved
Aug 10, 2025
Google logo
Google
Hard
Software Engineer

Design a Collaborative Notes Service

Design a collaborative notes service, similar to a lightweight online document editor. Users should be able to create, read, update, delete, and share...

System Design
4
0
56 people solved
Apr 29, 2025
Google logo
Google
Medium
Product Manager

Improve Google Maps and Android phones

You are interviewing for a Product Manager role at Google. Address two product strategy questions. Constraints & Assumptions - For Google Maps, choose...

Product Design & Strategy
4
0
53 people solved
Jan 20, 2025
Google logo
Google
Medium
Software Engineer Locked

Determine whether two nodes are related

This question evaluates understanding of graph representations, reachability and connectivity concepts for ancestry relationships, including handling ...

Coding & Algorithms
29
1
198 people solved
Jan 22, 2026
Google logo
Google
Medium
Software Engineer

Maximize Boundary-Difference Subarray Sum

Given an integer array nums and an integer k, find the maximum possible sum of a non-empty contiguous subarray whose first and last elements differ by...

Coding & Algorithms
3
0
20 people solved
Apr 11, 2026
Google logo
Google
Medium
Software Engineer Locked

Find Shortest Queue with Few Calls

This question evaluates algorithm design and analysis skills, focusing on working with restricted data structure APIs and minimizing total operations ...

Coding & Algorithms
6
0
67 people solved
Apr 10, 2026
Google logo
Google
Medium
Data Scientist

Adjust YouTube Ad Scores Using Mixed-Effects Linear Regression

Adjusting YouTube Ad Scores with Mixed-effects Regression One hundred reviewers each rate the same 100 YouTube ads on a 1 to 10 scale. Some reviewers ...

Machine Learning
12
0
105 people solved
Jul 12, 2025
Google logo
Google
Medium
Data Scientist

Generate Samples from Truncated Normal Distribution

Sampling from a Truncated Normal Distribution You draw from a normal distribution but only keep observations that are at least 1. Assume the original ...

Statistics & Math
24
0
78 people solved
Jul 12, 2025
Google logo
Google
Medium
Data Scientist

Identify and Fix Predictive Model Performance Gaps

Model Review: Month Encoding, Feature Scaling, and Imbalanced Data You are auditing an existing predictive model for operational performance. The curr...

Machine Learning
86
0
279 people solved
Jul 12, 2025
Google logo
Google
Medium
Data Scientist

Engineer Features to Enhance Smartphone Battery Life Prediction

Battery Life Prediction with Sparse History You are given sparse discharge traces that record battery percentage over elapsed time for prior usage ses...

Machine Learning
104
0
385 people solved
Jul 12, 2025
Google logo
Google
Hard
Software Engineer

Explain SLI/SLO/SLA and design monitoring

SLI vs SLO vs SLA for a Web API; Error Budgets; Monitoring and Alerting Design Context: You are designing reliability goals and on-call policies for a...

Software Engineering Fundamentals
8
0
59 people solved
Sep 6, 2025
Google logo
Google
Medium
Software Engineer

Describe manager and cross-team communication

Cross-Functional Communication, Expectations, and Risk Management (Behavioral) Context You are interviewing for a Software Engineer role in an onsite ...

Behavioral & Leadership
5
0
41 people solved
Sep 6, 2025
Google logo
Google
Hard
Software Engineer Locked

Find conflicting pair using black-box run()

This question evaluates algorithm design and query-complexity reasoning, focusing on efficient search strategies for identifying an interacting pair v...

Coding & Algorithms
10
0
92 people solved
Jan 15, 2026
Google logo
Google
Medium
Software EngineerNew Grad

Solve Two Coding Interview Problems

You are asked to solve two independent coding problems. Problem 1: Evaluate Nested Math Expressions Implement a function that evaluates a string expre...

Coding & Algorithms
0
0
10 people solved
Apr 8, 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 518 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 518-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.

Explore more Google interview questions

Jump straight to Google questions for a specific role or category.

By role
By category
In-depth guides
Across all companies

Featured Google interview prep guides

Concept walkthroughs, worked examples, and the real questions from candidate reports.

Editorial prep
Machine Learning Engineer
Google interview
Read the guide