Interview Experiences

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

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33 stories

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TikTokSoftware EngineerSenior+
Aug 2026

Two Completed Problems and Unexpected IDE Timeouts

Someone contacted me through a professional network, so I treated the interview as practice and a chance to see the market. The two questions were LeetCode 159 and 93. I stumbled a little on the problems, but I did write both solutions. Their Python coding IDE was very bad. It timed out several times, which made me think I had written an infinite loop, but the environment was actually just runnin…

RejectedTechnical Screen0
TikTokSoftware Engineer
Aug 2026

Three Weekly USDS Rounds Ending in Rejection

The rounds were basically scheduled one per week. 1st round, coding: Use round-robin scheduling to process tasks. Each task has a task_id, seller_id, tier (VIP or STANDARD), and priority (1 is high and 3 is low). Within one seller's backlog, tasks with smaller priority numbers must be processed first. Tasks with the same priority follow their arrival order, using FIFO. Across sellers, use weighte…

RejectedOnsite0
TikTokSoftware Engineer
Reported Jul 2026

TikTok Software Engineer C++ performance interview experience

The recruiter screen focused on my background, C++, and performance optimization. A technical coding interview followed on an online platform. I solved algorithmic problems in C++ and explained my approach and complexity analysis. The same session also covered modern C++ and engineering fundamentals, including memory management, multithreading, STL, and performance optimization techniques. The in…

Technical Screen0
TikTokSoftware Engineer
Reported Jul 2026

TikTok Software Engineer Interview Experience: late reschedule and 25-minute coding sprint

The interview was confirmed for an evening start, then moved less than a day beforehand because of interviewer availability. The earliest replacement was late at night, leaving little time to get focused. It began with a project deep dive, then shifted to live coding. I had to understand two problems, ask clarifying questions, explain my approach, and produce working solutions in roughly 25 minut…

Technical Screen0
TikTokSoftware Engineer
Reported Jul 2026

Software Engineer interview at TikTok

The recruiter gave me a broad sense of the role and scheduled the interviews, but I could not get much detail about the topics or how many stages remained. HR replied quickly, yet the process structure stayed unclear. The first technical stage was a LeetCode question. A later combined stage included technical discussion plus another LeetCode problem. Once interviewing started, things moved along,…

0
TikTokSoftware Engineer
Reported Jul 2026

TikTok Software Engineer interview: projects, systems topics and TreeNode DP

The opening was either a brief resume and role discussion or a direct start to the technical conversation, but it consistently set the direction first. I was asked about my background and then given a coding problem. Early topics included iOS development, backend work, Java, networking, and distributed systems. The interview then narrowed to a LeetCode-style TreeNode and DP challenge. The intervi…

Technical Screen0
TikTokSoftware Engineer
Reported Jul 2026

TikTok Software Engineer interview: demanding technical loop

After the initial HR coordination, I went through a longer technical loop that felt more demanding than typical screens I had seen. The interviewers were polite, but the overall impression was that people were stretched. Several interviewers mentioned heavy hours, so it did not feel like a casual conversation. There were several technical rounds, each built around LeetCode-style medium questions,…

Technical Screen0
TikTokSolutions Engineer
Reported Jul 2026

TikTok Solutions Engineer interview: resume discussion and LeetCode questions

The process was fairly direct. After a recruiter-style introduction about my background, the first technical interview covered my resume and behavioral questions before moving to a LeetCode medium problem in a usual interview format. The early rounds followed that pattern, with behavioral questions and one LeetCode problem each time. The interviewers were encouraging and wanted to hear how my pro…

Technical Screen0
TikTokSoftware Engineer
Reported Jul 2026

TikTok Software Engineer interview: troubleshooting, SQL and ticket prioritization

After I connected with the recruiter, the process moved slowly and felt disorganized. There were timing problems, including a reschedule when the hiring manager did not show up. The pace was the hardest part for me to tolerate. Once the technical interview happened, I introduced myself and discussed how I would approach the role, including what KPIs I would set. I then worked through practical tr…

Technical Screen0
TikTokSoftware Engineer
Reported Jul 2026

TikTok Software Engineer interview experience

HR reached out and the process began smoothly with the usual background conversation. Once I entered interviews, though, repeated rescheduling made the process drag. The delays and back-and-forth were more frustrating than the interview content itself. I eventually stopped waiting because I had received another offer and declined this process. The content was fairly straightforward, but the repea…

WithdrewHR Screen0
TikTokProduct Manager
Reported Jul 2026

TikTok Product Manager interview: detailed resume and project drilling

After applying, I started with a recruiter conversation centered on my resume. The recruiter walked through it with me, and the interview team made it clear that I needed to know my own CV inside out. Later interviews went deeper into the projects I had listed. I got detailed follow-up questions about specific decisions, my reasoning, and what happened as a result. My sense was that the exact for…

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TikTokData Scientist
Reported Jun 2026

TikTok Data Scientist interview experience: medium SQL and background follow-ups

After a smooth recruiter interaction, I went directly to a virtual one-on-one technical interview with someone from the hiring team. It was focused: a medium SQL question tested whether I could read and reason through the query, along with general data-science and machine-learning questions. The SQL was not intended as a trick question, but they wanted to see whether I understood what the code wa…

In progressTechnical Screen0
TikTokBackend Software EngineerIntern
Apr 2026

Two Rounds, an LRU Cache, and a Cold Interviewer

Overall, the entire interview process was okay and was not difficult, but I was very disappointed with the second-round interviewer. From beginning to end, that interviewer had a cold attitude, was not very willing to help, and asked questions that were not very clear. I heard that interviewers at TikTok are assigned randomly, so if you are unlucky, you can end up with a poor interviewer. The fir…

RejectedOnsite0
TikTokSoftware Engineer in TestIntern
Feb 2026

Two Rounds, a Distracted Interviewer, and a Reject

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RejectedTechnical ScreenXP0
TikTokMachine Learning EngineerNew Grad
Feb 2026

Three Technical Rounds, Pulled From the Pool

(Project questions omitted) Round 1: Our current business needs a multimodal large model to caption videos — how do you ensure deployment stays within compute and memory constraints? Follow-up: if you already have captions and embeddings, and a brand advertiser wants to quickly find relevant videos to watermark, how would you speed that up? What is overfitting, and how do you mitigate it? Coding:…

Technical Screen0
TikTokSoftware Engineer
Feb 2026

Three Rounds Heavy on Scalability and Distributed Systems

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Technical ScreenXP0
TikTokSoftware Engineer
Jan 2026

OA Moves to CodeSignal, Four Coding Questions

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Online AssessmentXP0
TikTokSoftware EngineerNew Grad
Jan 2026

Round 2 Was BQ Plus a DP Video-Scheduling Problem

Round 1 went pretty smoothly, and they told me about round 2 the next day — this round also wrapped up well. After a self-introduction, the interviewer moved into behavioral questions, mostly digging into my resume: briefly describe your internship project, what you learned from it, what was the most challenging project, how communication worked within the project team, what role you played, and…

In progressTechnical Screen0
TikTokTest Development Engineer
Jan 2026

32 Questions Covering Python, Data Structures, and a Gold Bar Brain Teaser

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Technical ScreenXP0
TikTokData ScientistNew Grad
Nov 2025

A Month of Rescheduling and a Prickly SQL Screen

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Technical ScreenXP0

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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