Interview Experiences

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

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20 stories

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PinterestSoftware Engineer
Sep 2026

Three Parts Passed Before Time Ran Out

The phone screen used the familiar Pins Violation Log problem. The input was a list of violation logs already sorted by timestamp. Each record had the form [postId, policy, timestamp]. There were five parts: Count unique posts by policy. Get the policies violated by a post. Count unique posts at a timestamp. Count unique posts in a time range. Count violations by policy in a time range. I had to…

Technical Screen0
PinterestMachine Learning Engineer
Reported Jul 2026

Pinterest Machine Learning Engineer interview: ML theory and quick rejection

The loop was short but rough. In the initial conversation, I tried to explain my projects, but the interviewer did not seem willing to listen. I then had a technical machine-learning session covering core theory, including vanishing gradients and ensemble methods such as bagging and boosting. There was also a LeetCode-style problem for about 30 minutes. The process ended quickly, and I received a…

RejectedTechnical Screen0
PinterestAccount Executive
Reported Jul 2026

Pinterest Account Executive interview: consecutive sales interviews

After the recruiter screen, I had three interviews in a row, with behavioral questions mixed with more technical prompts. There was almost no downtime between conversations, so I had to stay sharp throughout. The middle conversation was with the hiring manager, followed by two peer interviews. One leaned more technical and the other more toward behavioral fit. The difficulty felt fairly even. It…

HR Screen0
PinterestSoftware Engineer
Reported Jul 2026

Pinterest Software Engineer interview experience

The technical screen was difficult in a specific way: it was a LeetCode medium-to-hard problem with about an hour to solve it. I could receive hints, but was still expected to reach the solution myself instead of relying on help. Even with collaboration allowed, the clock mattered heavily. I did not progress to an offer, and the high bar left the familiar feeling that being almost there was not e…

Technical Screen0
PinterestSoftware Engineer
Reported Jul 2026

Pinterest Software Engineer interview: interrupted virtual technical questions

The interviewer sent the wrong virtual-meeting link and arrived about five minutes late, which set the tone. During a warmup that was basically a Boyer-Moore Voting Algorithm variation, they kept interrupting as I tried a brute-force implementation to understand the problem. I could not finish my thought. That happened again on a graph-traversal question. The interviewer seemed disengaged from th…

0
PinterestData ScientistSenior+
Jun 2026

A 30-Slide Case Round in One Hour

Overall, Pinterest's interviews really emphasize solid technical fundamentals. Stats, case, and coding all felt like final exams — the questions were dense and numerous, and they went really deep and got into a lot of detail. Most important thing is you could tell they had a specific correct answer in mind — even if you got most of the way there but didn't land on the exact right answer, the inte…

Onsite0
PinterestSoftware Engineer
Reported Jun 2026

Pinterest Software Engineer interview: route reconstruction and Sparse Matrix

I expected Pinterest to be intense, but the technical interview was surprisingly light. There were only two coding questions, and both were straightforward enough that I felt a little underwhelmed afterward. One asked me to reconstruct routes from unordered travel tickets. The other was to implement a Sparse Matrix class. I had prepared with PracHub case studies, which gave me a useful structure…

Offer0
PinterestSoftware Engineer
May 2026

An Elevator Problem With a Follow-up That Was Basically a Second Question

Two weeks ago I did the phone screen for Pinterest, and I still haven't heard anything, so let me post the question while I wait. The recruiter told me beforehand that this round would just be one coding question, and at the time I felt pretty relaxed — I figured forty-five minutes for one problem would be plenty either way. Turns out I was being naive. The question was this: given a set of eleva…

No responseTechnical Screen0
PinterestData Scientist
Mar 2026

Recruiter Conflict Splits a 5-Round Onsite Into Two Days

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In progressOnsiteXP0
PinterestMachine Learning EngineerSenior+
Feb 2026

Five Onsite Rounds, an Add-On Round, and a Scheduled Rejection Email

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RejectedOnsiteXP0
PinterestMachine Learning EngineerIntern
Feb 2026

70-Minute CodeSignal OA with Hand-Written Bagging and Naive Bayes

Based in Toronto. Looks like several teams were hiring at the same time, mostly on the search/ads/recommendations side. HR reached out on LinkedIn, and after I submitted my resume and cover letter they sent me an OA. 70 minutes, 10 questions, done on CodeSignal — 6 multiple choice, 1 coding question, and 2 ML engineering questions. The multiple choice questions were mostly ML fundamentals: the de…

Online Assessment0
PinterestData Scientist
Feb 2026

Onsite Loop Interrupted by Recruiter Conflict, Two Rounds Rescheduled

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In progressOnsiteXP0
PinterestData Scientist
Jan 2026

Five Rounds Interrupted by a Recruiter Conflict

I had a really bizarre interview experience. Pinterest VO: it was originally supposed to be 5 rounds back-to-back in one day, but on the day of the interview the recruiter said there was a conflict. I only did three rounds, and the other two got rescheduled to two days later. Round 1: use case / analytical system design. The interviewer was a DS manager. He laid out a simple problem statement and…

Onsite0
PinterestMachine Learning EngineerSenior+
Jan 2026

Two ML Design Rounds, Two Buggy Codings, and a Gut Feeling of Rejection

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OnsiteXP0
PinterestData Scientist
Jan 2026

A Virtual Onsite Split Across Two Days

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OnsiteXP0
PinterestSoftware EngineerSenior+
Jan 2026

A Debt-Settlement Variant of LC 465

Position: SR. Software Engineer A one-hour phone screen, and the question was a variant of LC 465 — it felt like it needed the accounting concept of settling balances, and if you hadn't seen something like this before you probably couldn't have gotten it. The problem was roughly this: a group of friends goes on a trip, and you're given a list of transactions. Each one has a payer, an amount, and…

Technical Screen0
PinterestData Scientist
Oct 2025

L5 Loop with Five Onsite Rounds and a BQ-Heavy XFN

Let me start with the overall timeline. I interviewed for a level 5 position: one round of phone screen, five rounds of onsite, and two rounds of team matching. The whole process took about a month, and after that I waited 2-3 days for the offer. Here's the general picture of how it went. Overall the interview had some real difficulty to it. The technical part was SQL plus Python. The SQL was on…

OfferOnsite0
PinterestData ScientistSenior+
Oct 2025

Five-Round Onsite Loop Ends in Rejection

Fresh rejection writeup — I just did a virtual onsite for a Staff Data Scientist role at Pinterest. (1) Coding: SQL joining three tables to calculate, for each country, the category with the most impressions, and to calculate the heavy user rate (heavy user defined as active at least 4 days in the past week, with at least 3 features used on one of those days). There was also a simple Python quest…

RejectedOnsite0
PinterestSoftware Engineer
Sep 2025

Three Coding Rounds, One Rough System Design

Overall it wasn't too hard — three coding rounds, one system design round, and one BQ round — but the system design round was really brutal... Here are the details: Coding: I'd never seen this one before. They give you a pre-written class that has a next() function — each call returns a string, roughly like this: "one//ntw", "o//n", "three//nfour", "//nfi", "ve" You're supposed to write your own…

Onsite0
PinterestData Scientist
Aug 2025

A Restaurant Reservation Coding Question and a Deep-Dive Stats Round

I felt like the whole interview experience was really good — the interviewers listened carefully, and there wasn't that "gotta beat you down" attitude some interviewers have. Two of the rounds felt somewhat difficult to me. coding: Not counting the resume intro, small talk, and the interviewer showing up late, the actual working time was about 30 minutes. The question involved a nested dictionary…

Onsite0

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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