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
Meta logo
Meta
Hard
Data Scientist Locked

Design and analyze notification pinning experiment

This question evaluates experimental design, causal inference, metric definition and instrumentation, sample size estimation, and analysis skills in t...

Analytics & Experimentation
1
0
22 people solved
Oct 13, 2025
Meta logo
Meta
Easy
Data Scientist Locked

Determine if users need a new feature

This question evaluates a data scientist's competency in product analytics, causal inference, experiment design, metric definition, instrumentation, a...

Analytics & Experimentation
2
0
32 people solved
Oct 11, 2025
Meta logo
Meta
Medium
Data Scientist

[Analytical Reasoning] Comparing Two Newsfeed Ad Insertion Methods

Compare two ad-insertion methods for a 100-post newsfeed. Both methods have the same average ad load. - Method A: each post is independently replaced ...

Analytics & Experimentation
18
0
76 people solved
Apr 7, 2025
Meta logo
Meta
Medium
Data Scientist

[Analytics Reasoning] Impact of Malicious Accounts on Meta

You are analyzing malicious accounts on a large social network. Assume: - 1% of all accounts are malicious. - Malicious accounts send friend requests ...

Analytics & Experimentation
10
0
44 people solved
Apr 7, 2025
Meta logo
Meta
Hard
Software Engineer

Design an e-commerce price tracking service

Design a backend system for an e-commerce price-tracking service. Users can track products from a large online retailer, view historical prices, and r...

System Design
1
0
28 people solved
Mar 23, 2025
Meta logo
Meta
Hard
Product Manager

Prioritize voice-to-text or assistant?

For the same accessibility-focused VR product, assume the team can ship only one feature first because engineering capacity is limited: voice-to-text ...

Product / Decision Making
4
0
33 people solved
Apr 10, 2024
Meta logo
Meta
Medium
Machine Learning Engineer

Implement bounds, minimum, pathfinding, and moving average

Solve the following data-structures problems: ( 1) Given two sorted integer lists A and B, merge them into a single non-decreasing array. Then, for a ...

Coding & Algorithms
6
0
48 people solved
Sep 6, 2025
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Meta
Medium
Software Engineer

Solve sliding window and tree BFS problems

1) Sliding window: Given an array of positive integers nums and an integer target, return the minimal length of a contiguous subarray whose sum is at ...

Coding & Algorithms
2
0
30 people solved
Sep 6, 2025
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Meta
Medium
Machine Learning Engineer

Merge two sorted arrays in-place

You are given two nondecreasing arrays A and B, where A has enough trailing empty slots to hold all elements of B. Merge B into A in-place so that A r...

Coding & Algorithms
5
0
51 people solved
Sep 6, 2025
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Meta
Medium
Software Engineer

Navigate unknown grid to locate target

You control a mouse in an unknown 2D maze. You do not know the maze dimensions or your absolute coordinates. The interface exposes move() → bool (atte...

Coding & Algorithms
2
0
24 people solved
Sep 6, 2025
Meta logo
Meta
Medium
Software Engineer

Solve grid path and top‑k frequency

Part A — Grid Reachability with Obstacles: Given an m×n matrix of 0s and 1s where 0 indicates a passable cell and 1 indicates a blocked cell, starting...

Coding & Algorithms
4
0
30 people solved
Sep 6, 2025
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Meta
Medium
Software Engineer

Compute vertical order of a BST

Compute the vertical order traversal of a binary search tree. Define coordinates so the root is at column 0, row 0; the left child is (col−1, row+ 1) ...

Coding & Algorithms
1
0
39 people solved
Sep 6, 2025
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Meta
Medium
Software Engineer

Compute nested depth-weighted sum

You are given a nested structure containing integers and lists (e.g., [1, [4, [6]]]). Define depth of the top-level as 1. Compute the total sum of all...

Coding & Algorithms
2
0
41 people solved
Sep 6, 2025
Meta logo
Meta
Hard
Software Engineer

Handle invalid input at system level

Design: Validation and Error Handling for a Top-K Frequency API Context You are designing a REST endpoint that computes the top-K most frequent values...

System Design
1
0
33 people solved
Sep 6, 2025
Meta logo
Meta
Medium
Software Engineer

Count palindrome substrings in a string

Given a lowercase ASCII string s, count the number of substrings that are palindromes and return the count. Implement an O(n^ 2) solution using expand...

Coding & Algorithms
6
0
68 people solved
Sep 6, 2025
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Meta
Medium
Machine Learning Engineer

Maximize one stock trade profit

You're given an array prices of length n where prices[i] is the stock price on day i. You may complete at most one transaction (buy once, then sell la...

Coding & Algorithms
2
0
34 people solved
Sep 6, 2025
Meta logo
Meta
Hard
Data Scientist Locked

Test if social users are more engaged

This question evaluates a data scientist's competencies in observational analytics, engagement metric selection, cohort construction for overlapping b...

Analytics & Experimentation
1
0
27 people solved
Aug 17, 2025
Meta logo
Meta
Medium
Software Engineer

Implement basic expression evaluator

Implement a function to evaluate a string expression containing non-negative integers, '+', '-', '*', '/', and spaces. Multiplication and division hav...

Coding & Algorithms
4
0
30 people solved
Aug 14, 2025
Meta logo
Meta
Medium
Software Engineer

Find missing ranges in interval

Given a sorted unique integer array nums and two integers lower and upper defining an inclusive interval [lower, upper], return all missing ranges not...

Coding & Algorithms
2
0
30 people solved
Aug 14, 2025
Meta logo
Meta
Medium
Software Engineer

Find the kth largest element

Given an unsorted array of n integers and an integer k (1 ≤ k ≤ n), return the k-th largest element without fully sorting the array. Design two method...

Coding & Algorithms
3
0
26 people solved
Aug 12, 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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