Meta Interview Questions

Meta Data Manipulation (SQL/Python) Interview Questions

Practice 1,159 real Meta interview questions for 2026. Covers top categories — Coding & Algorithms, Analytics & Experimentation, Data Manipulation (SQL/Python), Behavioral & Leadership, and System Design — across Software Engineer, Data Scientist, Machine Learning Engineer, Data Engineer, and Product Manager roles. Real questions from actual interviews with detailed solutions. Expect a software-engineering-heavy loop: timed algorithmic coding (trees, arrays, graph/maze problems, delimiter/CSV parsing), system-design prompts like leaderboards, flight search and online-judge architectures, and an increasingly common AI-assisted coding round that mirrors real workflows. Data Scientist rounds emphasize product analytics and experimentation—designing tests, diagnosing spend drops and bots, evaluating unconnected content, and writing SQL for multi-account, seller, and vehicle metrics. Machine Learning Engineer questions skew toward recommender and ranking work (place and friend recommendation, sparse-matrix ops, linear-regression derivations, newsfeed dislike models). Data Engineers focus on data modeling, ETL, capacity calculations, reservations/utilization queries, and production SQL/Python tasks. For interview preparation, prioritize timed coding practice, system-design templates, rigorous SQL drills (joins/CTEs/aggregation), clear A/B-testing frameworks, and concise STAR behavioral stories tied to measurable impact.

1.2k Questions 1 Company07.06.2026
Showing 20 results
Role
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Meta
Medium
Data Scientist

Handle sales pressure with analytical integrity

Interview Scenario: Call Volume vs. Win Rate — Causation vs. Correlation You support Sales as a data scientist. Leadership observed a positive correla...

Behavioral & Leadership
3
0
24 people solved
Oct 13, 2025
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Meta
Medium
Data Scientist

Choose group-call participant cap via distribution

Group Call Cap Decision: QoS vs Reach You are deciding whether to cap the maximum number of participants in a group call. You have the past 28-day dis...

Statistics & Math
6
0
44 people solved
Oct 13, 2025
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Meta
Medium
Data Scientist

Tune fraud threshold under review capacity and costs

Fraud Triage Thresholding with Calibrated Scores Context You have a fraud model that outputs a calibrated score s ∈ [0, 1] per account, where s ≈ P(fa...

Machine Learning
3
0
37 people solved
Oct 13, 2025
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Meta
Hard
Data Scientist

Design A/B test and success metrics for new feature

Instagram Collections 2.0 — Define Success, Experiment Design, and Measurement Context: You are proposing a new Instagram feature, Shareable Collectio...

Analytics & Experimentation
7
0
52 people solved
Oct 13, 2025
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Meta
Medium
Data Scientist

Compute feed ad frequency and retention in SQL

Assume today is 2025-09-01. Schema and tiny samples: feed_impressions(impression_id, user_id, impression_time, content_type, feed_position, session_id...

Data Manipulation (SQL/Python)
7
0
58 people solved
Oct 13, 2025
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Meta
Hard
Data Scientist

Communicate trade-offs and influence launch

Product Experiment Trade‑off: Notifications for Multi‑Account Users Context You ran an experiment on notification delivery to users who often maintain...

Behavioral & Leadership
1
0
29 people solved
Oct 13, 2025
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Meta
Hard
Data Scientist

Design Messenger spam experiment with clustering

Experiment Design: Spam-Detection Algorithm for Messenger You are evaluating a new spam-detection algorithm that routes suspected spam into a separate...

Analytics & Experimentation
3
0
42 people solved
Oct 13, 2025
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Meta
Hard
Data Scientist

Design metrics for violating content exposure

Measuring User Exposure to Violating Content on a UGC Platform Context You work on a large-scale user-generated content (UGC) platform that uses autom...

Analytics & Experimentation
2
0
26 people solved
Oct 13, 2025
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Meta
Medium
Software Engineer Locked

Solve maze reachability and two follow-ups

This set of tasks evaluates graph and state-space search with constrained movement (maze rolling ball), tree algorithms and recursion for computing di...

Coding & Algorithms
12
0
96 people solved
Feb 7, 2026
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Meta
Medium
Software Engineer Locked

Design an online coding contest platform

This question evaluates a candidate's ability to design scalable, reliable, and secure distributed systems for real-time, event-driven workloads, cove...

System Design
4
0
64 people solved
Feb 7, 2026
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Meta
Easy
Data Scientist

Define engagement metrics and analyze comment distribution

You are a Data Scientist for a video platform. A PM asks you to: 1) Define metrics for “engagement” (they want a clear metric framework they can use i...

Analytics & Experimentation
11
0
87 people solved
Dec 6, 2025
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Meta
Easy
Data Scientist Locked

Design an ad recommendation ranking approach

This question evaluates competency in machine-learning driven ad ranking and recommendation systems, including objective formulation, modeling strateg...

Machine Learning
8
0
61 people solved
Dec 6, 2025
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Meta
Medium
Data Scientist

Evaluating the Impact of Duplicate and Stolen Posts on a Content Platform

Evaluating the Impact of Duplicate and Stolen Posts on a Content Platform You are a data scientist at a large user-generated-content platform (think a...

Analytics & Experimentation
0
0
9 people solved
Feb 1, 2026
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Meta
Medium
Software Engineer

Compute interval mode, BST range sum, exclusive time

You are given several independent coding tasks. A) Most frequent integer covered by intervals You are given an integer range [-M, M] and a list of inc...

Coding & Algorithms
2
0
38 people solved
Oct 2, 2025
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Meta
Medium
Software Engineer

Design a real-time ad impression aggregator

Design an ads impression aggregator service with the following requirements: - The system ingests a high-volume stream of impression events (each even...

System Design
3
0
32 people solved
Oct 2, 2025
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Meta
Medium
Software Engineer

Solve sliding window and tree BFS

Solve sliding window and tree BFS Solve a typical medium-level sliding-window problem (e.g., longest substring without repeating characters). LeetCode...

Coding & Algorithms
5
0
50 people solved
Aug 4, 2025
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Meta
Medium
Software Engineer

Debug and optimize React performance issues

Debug and optimize React performance issues React Debugging and Performance Assessment Background You're reviewing a React single-page application dur...

System Design
4
0
48 people solved
Aug 4, 2025
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Meta
Medium
Data Scientist

Describe Handling Conflict in Team Projects and Collaboration

Describe Handling Conflict in Team Projects and Collaboration Behavioral & Leadership (Onsite) — Data Scientist Scenario You are interviewing for a Da...

Behavioral & Leadership
89
0
231 people solved
Aug 4, 2025
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Meta
Medium
Data Scientist

Evaluate Fake-Account Classifier with Precision and Recall Metrics

Evaluate Fake-Account Classifier with Precision and Recall Metrics Evaluating a Fake-Account Classifier in Production Scenario You have trained a mode...

Machine Learning
6
0
48 people solved
Aug 4, 2025
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Meta
Easy
Data Scientist

Calculate Posterior Fraud Probability Using Bayes' Theorem

Calculate Posterior Fraud Probability Using Bayes' Theorem Posterior Fraud Probability After a Flag Context You operate a fraud detection system that ...

Statistics & Math
19
0
87 people solved
Aug 4, 2025

Frequently Asked Questions

How difficult are Meta interview questions?
Meta interview questions span a wide difficulty range because they must screen candidates from entry to senior levels across many functions. Expect coding rounds to map to medium-to-hard algorithmic problems that appear in top 100 problem lists for software engineers, and expect data roles to face challenging SQL, experiment diagnosis, and product-analytics problems that require clean metric definitions. Machine learning roles emphasize recommendation and ranking tradeoffs and model complexity, while data engineers encounter large-scale ETL and modeling puzzles. Difficulty scales with level: entry hires see clearer, bounded problems; senior hires face ambiguous tradeoffs and system-wide thinking.
What is Meta's interview process and where do these questions appear?
Meta typically runs a multi-stage process: recruiter screen, one or two technical screens or an online assessment, a full loop of onsite-style interviews, then debrief, committee review, and offer. The full loop mixes coding, system or product design, role-specific technical rounds, and behavioral interviews. Software-engineer candidates spend most time on coding and design; data scientists focus on SQL, experimentation, and product analytics; machine-learning engineers see modeling and recommendation design; data engineers handle SQL, data modeling, and pipeline questions; PMs get product-design and analytics probes. In 2025–2026 some teams pilot AI-enabled coding rounds.
How should I structure a preparation timeline for a Meta interview?
A focused six-week plan works well: weeks one and two cover fundamentals—data structures, algorithms, SQL basics, and experiment design; weeks three and four emphasize timed problem practice, mock phone screens, and role-specific cases (A/B diagnosis for data scientists, model design for MLEs, ETL modeling for data engineers); week five concentrates on system or product design and behavioral storytelling; week six is for full mock loops, timing, and refining communication. Practice with realistic tools, simulate loop pacing, and schedule a debrief after each mock to iterate on clarity, edge-case handling, and time management.
Which technical subtopics are most commonly tested for each role at Meta?
For Data Scientist interviews the recurring technical themes are product-metric definition, diagnosing experiment and spend drops, counting multi-account interactions, SQL for multi-entity metrics, and ranking or recommendation evaluation such as shop ad ranking. Software-engineer questions frequently focus on timestamped state and versioned systems, leaderboards and ranking, maze/graph traversal and tree/array transforms, delimiter and CSV parsing, and scalable search or flight-search style designs. Machine-learning engineers see place and friend recommendation design, sparse-matrix operations, ranking/loss choices, and feed dislike or personalization models. Data engineers repeatedly face entity modeling for feed and booking data, SQL analytics for utilization and reservations, and capacity-aware aggregation challenges.
What standout tips and common pitfalls should I watch for in Meta interviews?
Start interviews by clarifying requirements and expected outputs, then propose measurable success metrics; this prevents misaligned solutions. For coding, think aloud, handle edge cases, state complexity up front, and write a couple of quick tests. In design rounds quantify load, storage, and tradeoffs rather than vague features. Data roles must define metrics, guardrails, and experiment assumptions before jumping to analysis; common pitfalls are ambiguous metric definitions, peeking at tests, and ignoring instrumentation limits. For AI-assisted coding rounds, use the assistant to accelerate boilerplate but validate logic and corner cases yourself. Finish each answer with a concise summary of impact and tradeoffs.

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