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Software Engineering Fundamentals Interview Questions
Practice 9403 coding, system design and machine learning questions from 546 companies, sorted by role, topic and interview round. Every question has step-by-step hints, a code runner that supports 8 languages and an AI mentor; members also get the full solution walkthrough.
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Showing 481–510 of 1208 results
- GoogleEasySoftware EngineerDesign an ads retrieval service using a heap
This question tests the ability to design a retrieval system using a priority queue and the implementation of efficient operations to maintain a sorted collection of ad candidates.
Software Engineering FundamentalsOnsiteHeapPriority QueueData Structures - GoogleMediumSoftware EngineerDesign an editable sequence with marker
This question evaluates understanding of mutable ordered sequence data structures, marker semantics and invariants, API and data model design, and algorithmic time-complexity trade-offs for insert, delete, and move operations.
Software Engineering FundamentalsOnsite - GoogleHardSoftware EngineerEvent Topic Router With Named Placeholders and Tail Wildcards
Build a router for a telemetry message bus that maps dot-separated topics to registered subscription patterns with named placeholders and a trailing multi-segment wildcard; tests trie design, precedence rules and backtracking.
Software Engineering FundamentalsOnsitetriebacktrackingstring-parsing - GoogleMediumSoftware EngineerEvolve Duplicate Detection for Sliding Windows and Read-Heavy Queries
Design a data structure that preprocesses an array in linear time to answer duplicate-within-distance-k queries in constant time.
Software Engineering FundamentalsTechnical ScreenHash TableSliding WindowArray - GoogleHardSoftware EngineerExplain SLI/SLO/SLA and design monitoring
This question evaluates a candidate's competency in service reliability and observability, specifically understanding and distinguishing SLIs, SLOs, and SLAs, planning error budgets, and designing monitoring and alerting for a production web API.
Software Engineering FundamentalsOnsite - GoogleMediumSoftware EngineerExplain what happens when you run ls
This question evaluates a candidate's understanding of process creation and execution, shell command resolution, kernel and VFS filesystem interactions, and how directory entries and file metadata are retrieved; category/domain: Software Engineering Fundamentals.
Software Engineering FundamentalsTechnical Screen - GoogleMediumSoftware EngineerExplore the Island at a Given Cell With BFS, Then Count Lakes Enclosed by Land
Given a satellite image as a grid of land and water cells and a starting cell, traverse the island containing that cell with breadth-first search, then extend the solution to count lakes, bodies of water completely enclosed by land. It tests grid traversal, precise problem definitions, connectivity rules and linear-time flood fill.
Software Engineering FundamentalsTechnical Screen - GoogleMediumSoftware EngineerFind the Most Frequent IP Addresses in a File Too Large for Memory
Find the ten most frequent normalized IP addresses with cutoff ties preserved, first in memory and then exactly through disk partitioning, per-partition aggregation, global thresholding, and skew handling.
Software Engineering FundamentalsTechnical Screen - GoogleMediumSoftware EngineerHow to handle huge inputs?
Answer the coding interview follow-up "what if the input is huge?" Covers memory checks, streaming, chunking, external sort, approximate structures, distributed processing, and engineering tradeoffs.
Software Engineering FundamentalsOnsite - GoogleHardSoftware EngineerImplement a Lazy Tee Iterator in Python
This problem tests your understanding of iterator protocols, generator patterns, and memory-efficient data buffering for multi-consumer streams.
Software Engineering FundamentalsTechnical ScreenPythonIteratorsGenerators - GoogleHardSoftware EngineerImplement a URL router that matches request paths against patterns with placeholders
Implement a URL router that registers path patterns with placeholder segments such as {userId} and returns the registered pattern that matches a concrete request path. It tests choosing a segment-level data structure, defining precedence between literal and placeholder matches, and analyzing registration and lookup complexity.
Software Engineering FundamentalsOnsite - GoogleMediumSoftware EngineerImplement an HTTP Router That Resolves Handlers for Paths with Named Parameters
Implement an HTTP router that registers handlers for path patterns, some with named parameters and some without, and looks up the handler and parameter values for a request path. It tests data structure choice, precedence between fixed and parameterized segments, conflict handling and lookup complexity.
Software Engineering FundamentalsTechnical Screen - GoogleMediumSoftware EngineerImplement matrix transforms and discuss eigenvalues
This problem tests your ability to perform in-place 2D matrix transformations and your conceptual understanding of how linear algebraic properties like eigenvalues describe matrix behavior.
Software Engineering FundamentalsOnsiteArraysMatricesLinear Algebra - GoogleMediumSoftware EngineerImplement quicksort and a binary search tree, and explain how each works internally
Implement quicksort and a binary search tree from scratch and explain how each works internally, including partitioning, pivot choice, insertion, search and deletion. Tests correctness invariants, best, average and worst-case complexity, duplicate and sorted inputs, alternative approaches, and how library implementations differ.
Software Engineering FundamentalsTechnical Screen - GoogleMediumSoftware EngineerLayer Config Trees with Pluggable Per-Path Merge Strategies
Combine a default configuration tree with an environment overlay where each path can pick a merge strategy such as deep, override, preserve, concat, union, or keyed list matching, and new strategies plug in without touching the traversal. Tests simultaneous tree recursion, registry-based extensibility, ordering rules and type-conflict handling.
Software Engineering FundamentalsTechnical Screenrecursiontreesextensibility - GoogleMediumSoftware EngineerMerge Two YAML Configuration Trees with Per-Node Merge Rules
Merge two configuration trees parsed from YAML files, where each node can follow its own merge rule, such as recursive merging, replacing, keeping, appending lists, or matching list items by a key field. Tests recursive traversal of two trees, an extensible way to apply many rules, and careful handling of ordering, one-sided keys and type conflicts.
Software Engineering FundamentalsTechnical Screen - GoogleMediumSoftware EngineerProcess Sharded Login Logs
This problem tests your ability to design a robust data pipeline for processing sharded, potentially out-of-order login logs from a distributed system.
Software Engineering FundamentalsOnsiteDistributed SystemsStream ProcessingData Structures - GoogleHardSoftware EngineerProject Deep Dive: Kafka Streaming, Redis Caching, and a Go Edge API Gateway
A resume deep dive from a software engineering intern screen: explain a Kafka streaming architecture and Redis caching from past backend work, then defend choosing Go for a distributed edge API gateway and explain how its latency was managed. Tests ownership, trade-off reasoning and failure handling.
Software Engineering FundamentalsTechnical Screen - GoogleMediumSoftware EngineerReason About an Endpoint-Only Interval Score
This problem tests the understanding of interval arithmetic properties and algorithmic implementation of selection logic in the presence of tied boundary indices.
Software Engineering FundamentalsOnsiteArraysMathOptimization - GoogleHardSoftware EngineerResolve Templated CDN Asset Paths to Their Registered Handlers
Implement a resolver that registers CDN asset path templates containing placeholder segments and, given a concrete request path, returns the matching template's handler along with the captured placeholder values.
Software Engineering FundamentalsOnsitetriedata-structuresalgorithms - GoogleEasySoftware EngineerShortest Distance Between Two Words, Then a Word-List Class With an Anagram Check
Find the smallest distance between occurrences of two given words in a list, then build a class over the word list that answers repeated distance queries and checks whether two words are anagrams. It tests linear-time scanning, precomputation for repeated queries, and correct letter-count comparison.
Software Engineering FundamentalsOnsite - GoogleMediumSoftware EngineerTrack the User with the Most Distinct Contacts: O(1) Query and Top-K for Changing k
Design a class that records undirected messages between users and returns the user who has talked with the most distinct people, then make that query constant time and add a top-K query whose k changes on every call. It tests deduplication with hash sets, space analysis of per-user sets, and incremental ranking structures.
Software Engineering FundamentalsTechnical Screen - GoogleMediumSoftware EngineerTrie-Based URL Router with Path Variables and Catch-All Tails
Implement a request router that registers path templates with {variable} and {*catch-all} segments and resolves a concrete path to its handler and captured values. Tests trie design, literal-over-variable precedence with backtracking, conflict detection, and lookup complexity.
Software Engineering FundamentalsTechnical Screentriebacktrackingdesign - GrammarlyMediumSoftware EngineerImplement a rate limiter and a pub/sub API
This problem evaluates your ability to implement a thread-safe rate limiter using the token bucket algorithm and design a lightweight, in-memory publisher-subscriber system.
Software Engineering FundamentalsTechnical ScreenConcurrencySystem DesignAPI Design - GustoMediumSoftware EngineerDesign an Extensible Tax Policy Engine
Design a modular, versioned tax policy engine that evaluates payroll taxes across different tax years and filing statuses using progressive and flat-rate strategies with deterministic precision.
Software Engineering FundamentalsOnsiteobject-oriented-designsystem-designclean-code - HackerRankMediumSoftware EngineerDebug React Sorting, Persistence, Routing, and Accessibility
This problem tests your ability to identify and rectify common React anti-patterns, including state mutations, improper side-effect handling, and accessibility failures in a data-driven application.
Software Engineering FundamentalsOnline AssessmentReactJavaScriptAccessibility - HadrianHardSoftware EngineerDesign a Rule-Driven Process Graph Validator
This problem tests your ability to model dependency constraints in a directed graph and implement an efficient algorithm to validate that a given execution sequence satisfies all structural and ordering requirements.
Software Engineering FundamentalsOnsiteGraphsValidationAlgorithms - HarveyMediumFrontend EngineerBuild a Virtualized React Spreadsheet with Cell Formulas
Design and implement a virtualized React spreadsheet component supporting editable cells, formula evaluation with string concatenation, cycle detection, and targeted re-rendering.
Software Engineering FundamentalsTechnical ScreenReactVirtualizationGraph Algorithms - HarveyMediumBackend EngineerExplain project decisions and trade-offs
This question evaluates proficiency in technical decision-making, trade-off analysis, and system design ownership for backend projects, including architecture rationale, technology selection, and the candidate's specific role and measurable impact.
Software Engineering FundamentalsOnsite - HarveyMediumSoftware EngineerFind Duplicate Files Safely at Scale
Design and implement a robust file duplicate finder that handles filesystem cycles, minimizes disk I/O using multi-stage filtering, and avoids loading entire large files into memory.
Software Engineering FundamentalsTechnical ScreenFile SystemsI/O OptimizationHashing
Google
Grammarly
Gusto
Harvey