Meta Software Engineer Interview Experience — Interviewing While Layoff News Broke, LC 215 and LC 236 With Follow-ups

Meta·Software Engineer·Feb 2026
Technical ScreenHR ScreenIn progressmedium

I was in the middle of interviewing when the news broke about a big round of layoffs. Setting AI aside, the questions for the traditional software engineer track seem to be getting harder and harder.

I got in through a referral from an alum, so the process into Meta went pretty smoothly. The pace was actually pretty fast — it took about two weeks to get through the first two rounds. The whole interview structure is pretty simple: first an HR screen, then a technical phone screen, and then an onsite (still waiting on the onsite scheduling).

The interviewer assignments felt a bit random — one of them didn't seem to have a clear picture of my background and was asking me questions as if I were a new grad.

HR round

Pretty much just a relaxed chat to get a sense of me.

Technical phone screen

The interviewer was pretty professional, but with none of that condescending vibe — communication was pretty comfortable. He gave me two problems:

An array problem, LC 215, and a tree problem, LC 236. But both had follow-up extensions and variants afterward: How would you optimize if it were a BST? What if the nodes had a parent pointer? What if the tree were too large to fit in memory?

I'd grinded both of these before and gave the optimal solution pretty quickly, but the interviewer gave me a few test cases that didn't all pass at first. Did Meta actually modify their question bank?

In the end, thanks to him going easy on me, the next round got scheduled at lightning speed.

Published

Curated and edited by PracHub

Practice the questions from this interview

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Interview at a glance

Company
Meta
Role
Software Engineer
Rounds
HR Screen → Technical Screen
Outcome
In progress
Difficulty
medium
Interview date
Feb 2026
Questions from this interview
1 question

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