Interview Experiences

Real candidates, real loops: every round, what was asked, and how it ended.

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24 stories

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AirbnbData Engineer
Sep 2026

Four-Round Onsite, Then a Recruiter Who Ghosted Me

Not many interview reports out there, so let me add mine — hope it helps. My recruiter was unreliable and ghosted me right after the interview. One round of OA. The VO (onsite) was four rounds of analytics interviews. OA: The SQL was pretty easy. The Python question gave a list/dict of city housing prices, and I had to find the median price for each city. VO: SQL: Find the top N, then figure out…

RejectedOnsite0
AirbnbSoftware Engineer
Aug 2026

A Perfect Cloud-Storage OA Score Followed by Rejection

I received the OA immediately after applying, got a perfect score, then received a rejection email a week later. The problem was a cloud storage system. It had four levels. You only got the next level after finishing and submitting the current one. Level 1: Support adding new files, retrieving files, and copying files. Level 2: Support finding files by matching prefixes and suffixes. Level 3: Sup…

RejectedOnline Assessment0
AirbnbSoftware Engineer
Aug 2026

A Four-Level Banking System Online Assessment

I recently took Airbnb's software engineering online assessment. I hope this question format helps people who take it later. One of the online assessment questions was a banking system or filesystem with unit tests. It was similar to CodeSignal's progressive-level problems. It was not a set of independent LeetCode questions; instead, new requirements kept being added to the same codebase. The ove…

Online Assessment0
AirbnbSoftware Engineer
Aug 2026

In-Memory File System OA, Four Levels Deep

The OA was an in-memory file system design problem: add files, copy files search files with prefix and suffix add users with capacity, add files by user, update user capacity compress and decompress files L1 and L2 were pretty straightforward. L3 required handling the relationship between users and files, and you had to modify the copy_file from L2. The copied file also has a size, and if size >…

Online Assessment0
AirbnbData Scientist
Aug 2026

HM Screen Where the Role Didn't Match the JD

The HM started off by introducing what the team does, saying this team works on analytics-related stuff. He also mentioned there are two other data-related teams besides this one: the data science team and the modeling team. According to the HM, when the analytics team has work that needs research or a deep dive, it gets handed off to the data science team. I'm not totally clear on how Airbnb div…

HR Screen0
AirbnbSoftware Engineer
Jul 2026

A Recipe-Management OA With Brutal Corner Cases

Fresh off the OA, just did it. I'm saying I definitely failed because I only passed two levels. I wrote level 3 but a few test cases wouldn't pass, and I never even got to see level 4. The problem itself isn't hard, but there are a ton of corner cases, and you need every single test case to pass before you can move on to the next level. I also feel like this is a brand new question bank, because…

RejectedOnline Assessment0
AirbnbSoftware Engineer
Jul 2026

A 90-Minute OA With a 4-Level Working Hours Register Problem

Time limit was 90 minutes, four levels total. Implement a Working Hours Register: employees badge in and out of the office, and the system records their working hours, with support for promotions, salary calculation, and bonus-period management. Level 1: Basic CRUD — add an employee, badge an employee in and out, query an employee's total hours worked. Level 2: Sort employees by hours worked and…

Online Assessment0
AirbnbSoftware Engineer
Reported Jul 2026

Airbnb Software Engineer interview experience

I applied for a Staff Software Engineer role and then heard nothing for more than a month. When I finally got an email, it invited me to a CodeSignal technical interview. The interface looked polished and had practice exercises, but the editor felt limited compared with a VS Code-style workspace and lacked conveniences such as autocompletion. The HackerRank-style assessment allowed 90 minutes and…

Online Assessment0
AirbnbSoftware Engineer
May 2026

Solved the Coding Question, Still Rejected

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RejectedTechnical ScreenXP0
AirbnbMachine Learning EngineerSenior+
Apr 2026

Four ML System Design Rounds, Rejected on Calibration

Four rounds, overall leaning heavily into ML system / ranking / marketplace scenarios. Not especially rote-memorization heavy, but they really value business sense and decision making. Two weeks later I got a curt rejection. Round 1: ML Experience / Behavioral + Technical This round mainly revolved around past projects, with a lot of focus on tradeoffs and decision making. I talked about a projec…

RejectedOnsite0
AirbnbSoftware Engineer
Apr 2026

Strong Start, Onsite Set Up to Fail

Sharing my full Airbnb loop. A friend's classmate referred me in, and I got a response the very next day. Here's the weird thing: the first round was a phone screen with the hiring manager — an HM based somewhere else — 30 minutes, and it went really well. He was a genuinely nice guy, and you could tell right away he was a good manager. What he worked on matched well with my background too, and I…

RejectedOnsite0
AirbnbSoftware Engineer
Mar 2026

Phone Screen to Verbal Offer in 39 Days

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OfferOnsitePremium0
AirbnbSoftware Engineer
Feb 2026

Rejected After Onsite Deep Dive Over Background Fit

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RejectedOnsiteXP0
AirbnbSoftware EngineerSenior+
Jan 2026

Full Onsite Loop, Rejected on System Design and Resume Deep-Dive

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RejectedOnsiteXP0
AirbnbSoftware Engineer
Jan 2026

Passed Onsite and Core Value, Now Waiting on Team Match

I got laid off in the middle of last year, unfortunately. After that, looking at my mortgage, I felt empty and pessimistic for a while, then started grinding practice problems hard. At first I used a bunch of small companies to warm up, but I was rusty and kept getting rejected all over the place — I was almost losing my confidence. Then I finally got an interview at Airbnb through a referral. Ai…

In progressOther0
AirbnbSoftware EngineerSenior+
Dec 2025

Passed Every Round, Then the Role Was Filled

Background: US bachelor's degree, 4.5 years of experience. Timeline Mid-October: mass-applied on LinkedIn to Airbnb Beijing (the "air mattress" company) — got a recruiter email the same day. A week later: 15-minute HR Screen introducing the role. Late October: 45-minute Tech Screen. Early November: VO1 (Coding 1) and VO2 (Coding 2), 45 minutes each. > Suggest a split stay where you stay at 2 diff…

RejectedOnsite0
AirbnbSoftware Engineer
Nov 2025

Bombed the Live Bug-Free Hotel Split-Stay Problem

The interviewer got on the call and, without saying a word, immediately dropped a problem on me. I think I'd seen fragments of this one on the forum before — the hotel split stay problem. But I'd only ever seen little snippets of the description and didn't remember the actual problem in much detail, so I basically treated it as a brand new question. The gist of the problem: it's about booking roo…

RejectedTechnical Screen0
AirbnbData Scientist
Oct 2025

Five Onsite Rounds That Felt Like a PhD Defense

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RejectedOnsiteXP0
AirbnbSoftware Engineer
Sep 2025

BQ Then a Tree Subsequence Coding Question

For the first round, there's a reference to check, but the post doesn't say what it points to. The second round started with a quick self-introduction and some small talk with the interviewer, then went straight into behavioral questions. We got asked: Talk about a time you taught yourself something — how did you learn it, and did it end up helping you in your actual work later on? Tell me about…

Technical Screen0
AirbnbSoftware EngineerSenior+
Sep 2025

A Whiteboard OOD Screen With a Difficult Interviewer

I did a team-match interview with a team at Airbnb, and the experience was pretty bad. First I had a round with the manager, and that went really well — we talked and it was a pleasant conversation. Then the manager said the next round would be a phone screen: 30 minutes for a resume deep dive and 30 minutes for coding. Before the phone screen I spent time prepping some project talking points and…

Technical Screen0

What are interview experiences?

An interview experience is a candidate's own account of a hiring loop — not a question bank entry. It tells you the shape of the process: how many rounds there were, what each round actually tested, how long the gaps between them ran, and what the recruiter said at the end. That context is the part a question list cannot give you.

How to read them

Weight recent write-ups more heavily — interview loops change, often within a year. Read several for the same company and role rather than one: a single account tells you what one interviewer asked, while five tell you what the bar is. Note the outcome badge too, since a rejection write-up usually explains the gap far more precisely than an offer one.

Share your own

Every published experience earns 50 XP, and each of the first 3 likes it receives in a day earns you 10 XP more. Likes must come from established accounts; like-for-like swaps and likes from your own second account are not paid. Write it while the details are fresh — the round order, the exact prompts, and how much time you were given are what the next reader needs.

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