Google Interview Questions

Google 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 Company07.27.2026
Showing 20 results
Role
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Google
Medium
Software Engineer

Assess behavioral competencies across scenarios

Behavioral Competency Prompts (Software Engineer, HR Screen) Provide specific work situations that demonstrate each competency below. Use concise STAR...

Behavioral & Leadership
6
0
90 people solved
Sep 6, 2025
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Google
Easy
Software Engineer Locked

Compute decayed power levels in a graph

This question evaluates knowledge of graph algorithms and distance-based propagation, testing concepts such as shortest-path distance computation, mul...

Coding & Algorithms
17
0
146 people solved
Feb 12, 2026
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Google
Medium
Software Engineer Locked

Find shortest relationship path using BFS

This question evaluates proficiency in graph representations and traversal algorithms—specifically BFS and adjacency-structure construction—for comput...

Coding & Algorithms
20
0
142 people solved
Feb 12, 2026
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Google
Medium
Data Scientist

Describe Overcoming Challenges and Persuading Non-Data Colleagues

Describe Overcoming Challenges and Persuading Non-Data Colleagues This is a behavioral interview prompt for a data scientist role. The interviewer is ...

Behavioral & Leadership
32
0
120 people solved
Jul 12, 2025
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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
85
0
278 people solved
Jul 12, 2025
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Google
Medium
Data Scientist

Analyze Impact of Customer Reviews on Sales Performance

Analyze Impact of Customer Reviews on Sales Performance A product team wants to understand how customer reviews influence sales. You have product-leve...

Analytics & Experimentation
21
0
55 people solved
Jul 12, 2025
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Google
Medium
Data Scientist

Build Classifier: Evaluate with AUROC for Imbalanced Data

Detecting Dead Links: Build and Evaluate a Classifier You have a dataset of 1,000 URLs labeled as good, meaning alive, or bad, meaning dead. The class...

Machine Learning
31
0
102 people solved
Jul 12, 2025
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Google
Medium
Data Scientist

Design A/B Test to Isolate Product Usage Drop Causes

Investigating a Product Usage Drop with Experiments You observe that product usage fell by 10 percent in the U.S. and 11 percent in Mexico over the sa...

Analytics & Experimentation
61
0
125 people solved
Jul 12, 2025
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Google
Medium
Data Scientist

Evaluate Optimal Jogging Routes Feature with A/B Testing

Evaluate an Optimal Jogging Routes Feature with A/B Testing Google Maps is considering a feature that recommends optimal jogging routes, such as safe,...

Analytics & Experimentation
14
0
77 people solved
Jul 12, 2025
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Google
Medium
Data Scientist

Evaluate College Impact on Income: Address Bias and Validity

Evaluating College Impact on Income with Observational Data You have an observational, cross-sectional dataset of 1,000 adult Mountain View residents....

Analytics & Experimentation
23
0
76 people solved
Jul 12, 2025
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Google
Medium
Data Scientist

Address Overfitting with L1 Regularization in Regression

Linear Regression with Many Predictors and Few Observations You fit an ordinary least squares linear regression with 500 predictors and 600 observatio...

Machine Learning
11
0
57 people solved
Jul 12, 2025
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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
80 people solved
Feb 8, 2026
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Google
Medium
Software Engineer Locked

Implement matrix transforms and discuss eigenvalues

This question evaluates understanding of matrix manipulation and numerical linear algebra, including in-place matrix transforms and rotations, sparse ...

Software Engineering Fundamentals
3
0
50 people solved
Feb 7, 2026
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Google
Medium
Software Engineer

How do you handle credit, leadership, and feedback?

Behavioral interview prompts Answer the following prompts with concrete examples from your experience (use a structured method such as STAR: Situation...

Behavioral & Leadership
9
0
74 people solved
Oct 14, 2025
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Google
Medium
Data Scientist Locked

Infer distribution and choose robust statistics

This question evaluates a candidate's ability to infer underlying distributions from summary statistics and apply robust statistical reasoning includi...

Statistics & Math
9
0
95 people solved
Oct 13, 2025
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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
44 people solved
Oct 13, 2025
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Google
Medium
Data Scientist

Demonstrate leadership in data ambiguity

Describe a time you inherited an underperforming metric or model, disagreed with the team’s preferred fix, yet had to recommend a decision under a tig...

Behavioral & Leadership
5
0
50 people solved
Oct 13, 2025
Google logo
Google
Hard
Data Scientist

Resolve conflict on trust versus growth priorities

Scenario You are an Engineering Analyst on a Trust/Integrity team. A senior Growth PM, with VP support, pushes to loosen an upload filter to boost Dai...

Behavioral & Leadership
6
0
55 people solved
Oct 13, 2025
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
136 people solved
Jul 4, 2025
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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
69 people solved
Jul 4, 2025

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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