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
Hard
Machine Learning Engineer Locked

Design large-scale near-duplicate video detection

This question evaluates a Machine Learning Engineer's competency in scalable similarity search and representation learning for multimedia, including e...

System Design
17
0
126 people solved
Jan 6, 2026
Google logo
Google
Hard
Data Scientist

Explain logistic regression vs forests and boosting

Technical Screen — Machine Learning Answer all parts precisely. 1) Binary logistic regression: model, loss, gradient, convexity - Define the model: p(...

Machine Learning
15
0
129 people solved
Oct 13, 2025
Google logo
Google
Medium
Software Engineer

Group movies via graph traversal

You are given n movies labeled 0..n-1 and a list of undirected pairs (a, b) meaning movies a and b are similar. Group all movies into categories where...

Coding & Algorithms
8
0
140 people solved
Sep 6, 2025
Google logo
Google
Medium
Software Engineer

Choose best/worst actions in workplace ethics scenarios

You are taking a situational judgment test (SJT). For each scenario below, the test presents four possible actions. You must select: - Most likely / b...

Behavioral & Leadership
15
0
131 people solved
Jan 22, 2026
Google logo
Google
Medium
Software Engineer Locked

Explain LLM fine-tuning and generative models

This question evaluates understanding of LLM adaptation techniques and trade-offs (fine-tuning and parameter-efficient methods) alongside knowledge of...

Machine Learning
21
0
170 people solved
Feb 12, 2026
Google logo
Google
Hard
Software Engineer

Design task scheduler with dependencies

Design a Distributed Task Scheduling Infrastructure Context Design a distributed task scheduling and orchestration system that can run at scale, suppo...

System Design
24
0
259 people solved
Sep 6, 2025
Google logo
Google
Hard
Machine Learning Engineer

Respond to long-term concerns after A/B success

Your model performs well in an A/B test (statistically significant lift on the primary metric). However, your manager believes the model may harm long...

Behavioral & Leadership
14
1
102 people solved
Jan 6, 2026
Google logo
Google
Medium
Software Engineer

How to host many domains on one IP?

You have a single Linux server with one public IPv4 address. A coffee shop, butcher shop, and auto repair shop each want their own website and their o...

System Design
28
0
198 people solved
Feb 1, 2026
Google logo
Google
Medium
Software Engineer

Answer common collaboration behavioral questions

Behavioral interview prompts Answer the following behavioral questions with concrete examples (use the STAR or CAR framework). Focus on your specific ...

Behavioral & Leadership
8
0
73 people solved
Feb 12, 2026
Google logo
Google
Medium
Machine Learning Engineer Locked

Compare NLP tokenization and LLM recommendations

This question evaluates a candidate's understanding of NLP tokenization approaches and the ability to design LLM-based recommendation components, asse...

Machine Learning
23
0
199 people solved
Feb 8, 2026
Google logo
Google
Medium
Software Engineer

Answer leadership and ambiguity scenarios

Question Answer the following behavioral & leadership questions with concrete examples. Use a structured format such as STAR (Situation, Task, Actions...

Behavioral & Leadership
20
0
155 people solved
Jan 1, 2026
Google logo
Google
Easy
Software Engineer Locked

Design an ads retrieval service using a heap

This question evaluates understanding of priority queues/heaps, object-oriented API design, and algorithmic techniques for maintaining dynamic priorit...

Software Engineering Fundamentals
17
0
163 people solved
Mar 1, 2026
Google logo
Google
Easy
Software Engineer Locked

Design a waitlist manager

This question evaluates object-oriented design and data-structure competency—modeling a FIFO waitlist API, managing unique party identifiers and edge ...

Software Engineering Fundamentals
11
0
100 people solved
Mar 1, 2026
Google logo
Google
Hard
Software Engineer

Design a key-value store

System Design: Scalable Key–Value Store with Range Scans You are asked to design a distributed key–value (KV) store that supports the following operat...

System Design
18
0
145 people solved
Sep 6, 2025
Google logo
Google
Medium
Software Engineer

Find fair split of a two-color necklace

Given a circular necklace represented by a string s over {'a','b'}, you may cut the necklace at most twice (yielding three contiguous pieces). Can you...

Coding & Algorithms
12
0
153 people solved
Sep 6, 2025
Google logo
Google
Easy
Data Scientist

Design tests to measure latency impact

Question You are a Data Scientist supporting a large consumer product (e.g., YouTube). Engineering ships a change intended to reduce client-side / vid...

Analytics & Experimentation
9
0
118 people solved
Oct 13, 2025
Google logo
Google
Easy
Software Engineer Locked

Deterministic Task Execution Order

This question evaluates a candidate's ability to model task dependencies as a directed graph and produce a valid execution order, a core graph algorit...

Coding & Algorithms
2
1
11 people solved
Jun 22, 2026
Google logo
Google
Medium
Software EngineerNew Grad

Design an editable sequence with marker

Design a mutable ordered sequence of elements together with a marker that points to one element in the sequence. Support the following operations: - I...

Software Engineering Fundamentals
6
0
87 people solved
Feb 24, 2026
Google logo
Google
Medium
Software EngineerNew Grad

Design a Dormitory Room-Assignment System (OOD)

You are asked to design the object-oriented model for a dormitory room-assignment system. You are given a set of students and a set of rooms. Each roo...

Software Engineering Fundamentals
2
0
29 people solved
Feb 22, 2026
Google logo
Google
Easy
Data Scientist

Describe a challenging project and how you succeeded

Behavioral prompts Answer the following using a structured format (e.g., STAR: Situation, Task, Action, Result), focusing on your contributions, trade...

Behavioral & Leadership
6
0
71 people solved
Feb 7, 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.

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