real interview stories, told over a cup of tea ♡
Netflix Interview Experiences
3935 interview stories from candidates at 857 companies: how each round went, what was asked and how it ended. Every company page links to practice questions in the same style.
- 3935
- Experiences
- 857
- Companies
- 532
- Offers
16 results
- Phone Screen on a Key-Value Store with TTL, RejectedNetflix · Software Engineer · Senior+ · Technical Screen · Oct 2026Rejected
I recently interviewed for an IC5 role on the Netflix Ads team. The phone screen was the classic Key-Value Store with TTL. Personally I felt it went okay. I implemented the usual set of methods, and for TTL expiration I used a min heap keyed on timestamp. I explained my design thinking and the tradeoffs as I went, wrote test cases at the end, and the code ran correctly. I still got rejected. The…
- 90-Minute OA With 4 MC and 2 Coding QuestionsNetflix · Machine Learning Engineer · Intern · Online Assessment · Sep 2026
I just finished the Netflix MLE Intern OA. It was timed at 90 minutes, with 6 questions total: 4 multiple choice and 2 coding. Below are the topics I remember. I don't fully remember the exact wording or details anymore, but I hope this helps others preparing for the same OA. The multiple choice questions were fairly basic overall. The topics I can recall: Bayes' formula; simple calculations invo…
- Data Platform Loop, Rejected After the Final System Design RoundNetflix · Software Engineer · Onsite · Sep 2026Rejected
I think the team I interviewed for was data platform. A recruiter reached out because I had related experience a few years ago. From other posts I used to think the problem solving round and the coding round were different, but after going through it they feel like essentially the same thing. Netflix's interview process is very long, and different teams probably test different things, so you need…
- ML Fundamentals Plus a Production PR Review, RejectedNetflix · Machine Learning Engineer · Technical Screen · Sep 2026Rejected
Sharing a failure story from September. The recruiter reached out to me on LinkedIn, and then we scheduled a phone screen. Since this was hiring for a newly formed applied GenAI org, the format was pretty new and I haven't seen it in any other interview write-ups: 30 min of ML fundamentals + 30 min of practical coding. 30 min ML fundamentals, three questions: What is a KV cache? What is attention…
- Two Back-to-Back Coding Rounds and a No-Feedback RejectionNetflix · Software Engineer · Technical Screen · Aug 2026Rejected
The questions were different from every interview report I had seen. There were two back-to-back interviews. First phone round — problem solving: Question: The ping times between cities are different. Starting from one city, find the fastest paths for broadcasting to every other city. Solution: Dijkstra's algorithm. Follow-up: If the ping times keep changing, how should the paths be updated? Solu…
- An Open-Book Coding Screen That Still Ended in RejectionNetflix · Software Engineer · Technical Screen · Jul 2026Rejected
I interviewed for the Member team — it was basically an open-book style interview, similar to a couple of other phone screen reports I'd seen. Problem Solving: Netflix homepage content dedup — for each row, the first n titles need to be deduplicated globally; after position n+1, you only need to make sure there's no duplicate within that row itself. Follow-ups: 1. what if n is different for each…
- Netflix Software Engineer interview: seven interviews over more than two monthsNetflix · Software Engineer · Technical Screen · Jul 2026Offer
My Netflix Software Engineer process took a little more than two months from applying to accepting an offer. What surprised me was the number of steps. I went through seven interviews, a mix of technical rounds and behavioral conversations, so it felt like a long, involved process rather than a quick loop. The technical side covered coding and systems design style thinking. The difficulty felt hi…
- Passed VO1 With a Billboard Rotation Coding Round and an ML Job Scheduler System DesignNetflix · Software Engineer · Onsite · Jun 2026In progress
Netflix's VO (virtual onsite) has two rounds — VO1 and VO2. VO1 is more general. VO2 leans into stuff related to the specific team you're interviewing with. I'll share VO1 here. Coding: movie billboard rotation. Don't use a heap — use two treemaps. Two followups total: 1) multi-threading, 2) how you'd scale it in production and how you'd store/access the data. SD: schedule ML jobs. The main point…
- First-Ever System Design Round, a Subscription System, and an OfferNetflix · Software Engineer · Other · Apr 2026Offer
This was my very first system design interview, and I had no real background in it at all. I had about a week to prepare. I began with an online system design course and read all of its articles. They explained what system design even is and gave me an outline I could stick to. After that I moved on to the course's practice problems, and those are what really changed things for me. I watched some…
- Four Onsite Rounds on the Ads Team, Then Ghosted During a FreezeNetflix · Software Engineer · Senior+ · Onsite · Apr 2026No response
Posting to share my interview experience with a different team on the Ads side, hoping it brings me some luck. It's been two weeks since I finished interviewing and I've been ghosted — no message at all from HR, so it's probably just gone into a black hole. First, I asked if I could interview for Staff, but HR firmly said no, telling me that an outside L6 is an L5 here, and that I'd have a chance…
- A 75-Minute Causal Inference OA That Left Me GuessingNetflix · Data Scientist · Intern · Online Assessment · Mar 2026No response
New here, and internships are so hard to find. This is the second OA I've gotten after countless mass applications, and long story short, it's been two weeks with no response so I'm assuming it's dead. The whole thing was about 75 minutes and had to be completed within a week. First there were two coding questions, and you could use Python or R — both coding questions were under the same setting.…
- Two BQ Rounds Left Me With No SignalNetflix · Software Engineer · Onsite · Mar 2026
Just finished my interview. L5 SDE, Ads team, onsite. Coding: Not a LeetCode problem, but it's basically a Tree DFS problem underneath. Not too hard, but remember to write your own code and actually test it yourself. SD: Ad frequency cap — a classic. DM: Demand-side table. Also a classic — the usual set of tables: advertiser / campaign / ad group / ad. BQ1: Honestly I couldn't really tell what ki…
- Onsite Loop in the Ads Org: Topo Sort, System Design, and Two BQsNetflix · Software Engineer · Senior+ · Onsite · Jan 2026Offer
I passed this earlier this year, for the Ads department, which has been pretty popular lately. Since I'm planning to accept the offer, I'm not going to post the specific questions — search for the last three months of posts here and you'll find they're almost all the same type. I'll share some experience and feelings that I hope will be useful. Process-wise: they got back to me 1 day after the ph…
- 11 Rounds, 10 People, and a Hiring Manager Swapped Mid-LoopNetflix · Data Scientist · Onsite · Oct 2025Rejected
I just got an early update from the recruiter. The email said they're still gathering information, but unfortunately it's "not a perfect fit." I did 11 rounds in total and met 10 people. The whole process was absolutely ridiculous, spanning a full two and a half months. Referral HR screening: Netflix culture, personal background, why I'm job hunting First technical round: pure SQL, had to actuall…
- Eleven Rounds, Two and a Half Months, and a Hiring Manager SwapNetflix · Data Scientist · Onsite · Oct 2025Rejected
I just got an early update from the recruiter. The email said they're still gathering information, but "not a perfect fit, unfortunately." I interviewed 11 times total, met with 10 different people, and the whole process was absurd — it dragged on for two and a half months. Referral HR screening: Netflix culture, my background, why I'm job hunting First technical round: pure SQL, had to actually…
- Two Phone Screens, Then a Week of Silence Before RejectionNetflix · Software Engineer · Technical Screen · Aug 2025Rejected
Rejected. It doesn't feel like a hard fail — after the interview it took about a week to hear back, and when I followed up, HR said they were syncing up with the team, and in the end told me they were moving on with other candidates. My own sense is that I didn't perform badly, but definitely not perfectly — there were various small issues where I didn't give the optimal answer right away, or I m…
