Airbnb interview questions

Showing 1–30 of 112 results

• Address miscommunication and alignmentMedium

  Address miscommunication and alignment evaluates behavioral evidence, ownership, communication, trade-offs, and measurable outcomes in a realistic interview setting. A strong answer states assumptions, handles edge cases, explains trade-offs, and shows how to validate the result clearly.

  AirbnbSoftware EngineerBehavioral & LeadershipTechnical Screen
• Aggregate User Activity, Fit Regression, Interpret CoefficientsMedium

  This question evaluates skills in relational data aggregation and feature engineering using SQL alongside fitting and interpreting regression models in Python, targeting competencies in transforming event-level user metrics into a modeling dataset and interpreting coefficient estimates.

  AirbnbData ScientistData Manipulation (SQL/Python)Technical Screen
• Airbnb Mission, Belonging & HostingMedium

  Practice Airbnb behavioral interview answers about mission, belonging, hosting, and product empathy. The guide connects Airbnb's mission to personal stories, inclusive team behavior, guest and host trust, safety, accessibility, hosting concepts, and measurable product impact.

  AirbnbProduct ManagerBehavioral & LeadershipOther
• Allocate an Order from the Oldest Inventory BatchesMedium

  Implement a function to allocate an order across inventory batches using FIFO (oldest timestamp first, with batch ID tie-breaker), returning allocation details and any unfilled quantity without mutating the input.

  AirbnbSoftware EngineerCoding & AlgorithmsOnsite
• Allocate refund across paymentsMedium

  This question evaluates algorithm design and data-structure selection skills, focusing on greedy allocation, ordering by priority and recency, aggregation of transaction amounts, and analysis of time complexity.

  AirbnbSoftware EngineerCoding & AlgorithmsOnsite
• Answer cross-team delivery and values questionsHard

  This question evaluates a candidate's competency in cross-team delivery, stakeholder communication across time zones and cultures, project ownership, risk assessment, and leadership when internal ETAs slip, and it falls under the Behavioral & Leadership category.

  AirbnbSoftware EngineerBehavioral & LeadershipTechnical Screen
• Build an Incremental Loyalty-Points Ledger with Scheduled, Cancelable TransfersMedium

  Implement an in-memory loyalty-points ledger that grows in three stages: atomic transfers between accounts, transfers scheduled for a future point on a simulated clock, and cancellation of a transfer before it fires. Tests incremental state-machine design, validating before mutating, and keeping point totals correct across every sequence of calls.

  AirbnbSoftware EngineerSoftware Engineering FundamentalsOnline Assessment
• Build and evaluate an order prediction modelMedium

  This question tests the ability to design a robust end-to-end machine learning pipeline for binary classification, focusing on preventing temporal data leakage, managing class imbalance, and aligning model thresholds with business objectives.

  AirbnbData ScientistMachine LearningTechnical Screen
• Build panel in SQL; run causal regressionMedium

  This question evaluates proficiency in SQL-based panel data construction, time-series aggregation and rolling-window metrics together with applied causal inference in Python, including two-way fixed-effects difference-in-differences, clustered standard errors, lead tests, and count-model re-specification; it targets Data Manipulation (SQL/Python) skills relevant for Data Scientist roles. It is commonly asked because it combines practical implementation and conceptual understanding—testing temporal joins, treatment timing, avoidance of lookahead/immortal-time biases and late-adopter issues, interpretation of interaction coefficients and confidence intervals, and the ability to reason about identification and model choice.

  AirbnbData ScientistData Manipulation (SQL/Python)Technical Screen
• Calculate the Median House Price in Each CityMedium

  Tests your ability to compute grouped medians in PostgreSQL, properly handling even and odd row counts, duplicate price values, and numeric precision.

  AirbnbData EngineerData Manipulation (SQL/Python)Onsite
• Compute C/T metrics from bookings and visitsMedium

  This question evaluates time-window attribution, visit deduplication, control vs treatment metric computation, aggregation of conversions and revenue, and statistical interval estimation (Wilson CIs), testing practical data manipulation skills with SQL or Python in the Data Manipulation (SQL/Python) domain.

  AirbnbData ScientistData Manipulation (SQL/Python)Technical Screen
• Compute board-game score from regionsMedium

  This problem tests your ability to identify connected components in a 2D grid using graph traversal (BFS/DFS) and aggregate properties associated with those components.

  AirbnbSoftware EngineerCoding & AlgorithmsOnsite
• Compute browsing metrics in Python from logsMedium

  This question evaluates a candidate's ability to perform event-level data manipulation and analytics in Python and SQL, covering sessionization, time-zone–consistent timestamp handling, deduplication, funnel construction, segment-level aggregation, conversion-rate computation, and statistical confidence intervals such as the Wilson CI.

  AirbnbData ScientistData Manipulation (SQL/Python)Technical Screen
• Compute minimum-cost service coverMedium

  This question evaluates proficiency in combinatorial optimization and set-coverage with cost minimization, including handling case-insensitive service matching and enumerating minimal solution combinations.

  AirbnbSoftware EngineerCoding & AlgorithmsTechnical Screen
• Compute split-stay listing pairsMedium

  This question evaluates the ability to manipulate interval availability data, reason about contiguous date ranges and split boundaries, and design efficient pairing algorithms with attention to time and space complexity.

  AirbnbSoftware EngineerCoding & AlgorithmsTechnical Screen
• Construct smallest number from I/D patternMedium

  This problem tests greedy algorithm design and stack-based data structure manipulation to satisfy relative ordering constraints within a sequence of digits.

  AirbnbSoftware EngineerCoding & AlgorithmsTechnical Screen
• Count Candies from Unlockable BoxesMedium

  Determine the maximum number of candies you can collect given an initial set of boxes, where each box may be locked or unlocked, contain candies, contain keys to other boxes, and contain other boxes.

  AirbnbSoftware EngineerCoding & AlgorithmsTechnical Screen
• Count Consecutive Positive Integer SumsHard

  Count representations of a positive integer as one or more consecutive positive integers, including the one-term representation. Derive the arithmetic condition for each sequence length and use a square-root bound rather than testing every possible starting value.

  AirbnbSoftware EngineerCoding & AlgorithmsOnsite
• Define Success Metrics and Experiment Plan for Product DevelopmentMedium

  Evaluates product-planning metrics and experiment design for a two-sided marketplace booking funnel. Strong answers define a primary booking metric, diagnostic and guardrail metrics, randomization unit, sample size, marketplace spillovers, and launch criteria before development.

  AirbnbData ScientistAnalytics & ExperimentationTechnical Screen
• Define a File Store with User Quotas and CompressionMedium

  Implement an in-memory cloud file store that supports file creation, copying, prefix/suffix search, per-user storage quotas, and atomic file compression/expansion.

  AirbnbSoftware EngineerSoftware Engineering FundamentalsOnline Assessment
• Describe How You Use SQL in Data Science WorkMedium

  This question assesses a candidate's ability to articulate their technical workflow in SQL, focusing on data extraction strategies, quality assurance, and how technical analysis translates into business impact.

  AirbnbData ScientistData Manipulation (SQL/Python)HR Screen
• Describe a cross-functional project you’re proud ofMedium

  This question evaluates cross-functional collaboration, leadership, stakeholder alignment, conflict resolution, project ownership, and the ability to articulate technical and product decisions along with measurable impact.

  AirbnbSoftware EngineerBehavioral & LeadershipOnsite
• Describe a flagship project’s architecture and tradeoffsMedium

  This question evaluates leadership and ownership along with system architecture and trade-off analysis, assessing competencies in end-to-end technical design, stakeholder communication, implementation decisions, and metrics-driven impact.

  AirbnbSoftware EngineerBehavioral & LeadershipOnsite
• Describe your role, motivations, and valuesMedium

  This question evaluates a software engineer's communication, self-awareness, motivation, and cultural-fit competencies, along with indicators of leadership, teamwork, and clarity in scope and impact.

  AirbnbSoftware EngineerBehavioral & LeadershipHR Screen
• Design User Embedding Semantic SearchMedium

  This question evaluates competency in ML system design for recommendation and semantic retrieval, covering user and listing representation learning, two-stage retrieval and ranking architectures, training objectives and label design, bias correction from interaction logs, and evaluation and experimentation practices.

  AirbnbMachine Learning EngineerML System DesignOnsite
• Design a Family-Friendly Listing ClassifierMedium

  This question evaluates proficiency in machine learning system design, including problem formulation tied to product objectives, labeling strategy, feature engineering, model selection, evaluation metrics, robustness to adversarial labels, fairness considerations, and cold-start handling.

  AirbnbMachine Learning EngineerML System DesignOnsite
• Design a Multi-Level In-Memory Cloud Storage ServiceMedium

  Design a multi-tiered in-memory cloud storage system supporting staged uploads, capacity limits, prefix search ranking, and conflict-aware backup and restore operations.

  AirbnbSoftware EngineerSoftware Engineering FundamentalsOnline Assessment
• Design a Reliable Scheduler for Payment JobsMedium

  Tests candidate's ability to design a mission-critical, fault-tolerant job scheduler for payment processing, focusing on lease claiming, idempotency, race condition handling, and reconciliation.

  AirbnbSoftware EngineerSystem DesignOnsite
• Design a Rental Marketplace BackendHard

  This problem tests your ability to design a distributed, high-scale rental marketplace platform, focusing on concurrency control for bookings, efficient geo-spatial searching, and data consistency.

  AirbnbBackend EngineerSystem DesignOnsite
• Design a Stateful Banking System with Scheduled Payments and Account MergesMedium

  Design an in-memory stateful banking system that supports account creation, transfers, spending leaderboards, scheduled payments with deterministic backlog processing, and account merges.

  AirbnbSoftware EngineerSoftware Engineering FundamentalsOnline Assessment