practice a little every day, paws crossed ♡
Software Engineer 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.
- 9403
- Questions
- 546
- Companies
- 11
- Topics
- 8
- Languages
Showing 2311–2336 of 2336 results
- eBayMediumSoftware EngineerDesign a Streaming Top-Ten Sales Dashboard
This question tests the ability to design a distributed, low-latency streaming pipeline that aggregates high-velocity sales data into a real-time leaderboard.
System DesignOnsiteStreamingDistributed SystemsData Pipelines - eBayHardSoftware EngineerDesign an online marketplace for buying and selling
This question evaluates competency in large-scale system design, covering distributed systems, data modeling, scalability, consistency, security, payments and escrow, media handling, and operational concerns for a two-sided online marketplace.
System DesignOnsite - eBayMediumSoftware EngineerExplain Why You Are Leaving Your Current Role
This question assesses the candidate's ability to communicate professional motivations, growth mindset, and alignment with a new company without speaking negatively about previous experiences.
Behavioral & LeadershipOnsiteBehavioralCareer GrowthCommunication - eBayMediumSoftware EngineerExplain Why You Want to Join This Company
This question tests your ability to articulate a clear, value-driven motivation for joining the organization, moving beyond surface-level enthusiasm to demonstrate alignment with the company's technical scale and business model.
Behavioral & LeadershipOnsiteBehavioralMotivationCulture Fit - eBayMediumSoftware EngineerFind the Container with the Most Water
This problem tests your ability to optimize an O(n^2) brute-force approach into an O(n) two-pointer solution by leveraging geometric constraints.
Coding & AlgorithmsOnsiteArraysTwo PointersGreedy - eBayHardSoftware EngineerFind top co-viewed products
This question evaluates algorithmic problem-solving and implementation skills in the Coding & Algorithms domain, including frequency aggregation, ordering with tie-breakers, and efficient data-structure use for session-based recommendation counting.
Coding & AlgorithmsOnsite - eBayMediumSoftware EngineerInvesting in Deliberate Professional Growth
This question assesses a candidate's ability to self-identify professional skill gaps, design a structured learning plan, and quantify their growth through feedback.
Behavioral & LeadershipOnsiteGrowth MindsetSelf-ReflectionProfessional Development - eBayMediumSoftware EngineerPass functions and analyze basic data structures
This question evaluates proficiency with higher-order functions, passing functions or delegates, closures, and reasoning about side effects, alongside the ability to analyze fundamental data structures and their performance characteristics.
Coding & AlgorithmsOnsite - eBayMediumSoftware EngineerResolving a Technical Conflict with a Colleague
This question assesses a candidate's ability to navigate technical disagreements through objective analysis, collaborative communication, and post-decision reflection.
Behavioral & LeadershipOnsiteBehavioralConflict ResolutionCollaboration - eBayMediumSoftware EngineerSolve Dependency, Prefix, and Cache Problems
This set of problems evaluates graph algorithms for dependency and cycle detection, efficient data structure design for prefix-based word storage, and cache eviction policy implementation, assessing skills in algorithmic analysis, data structures, and time/space complexity within the Coding & Algorithms domain.
Coding & AlgorithmsOnsite - xAIMediumSoftware EngineerCompute total active time per Twitter Space
This problem tests your ability to process chronological event streams to calculate overlapping or continuous active intervals and aggregate durations per category.
Coding & AlgorithmsOnsiteSortingHash MapData Processing - xAIMediumSoftware EngineerDesign a Least Frequently Used (LFU) Cache with O(1) Operations
This question evaluates understanding of data structures and algorithm design for implementing a Least Frequently Used (LFU) cache with O(1) get and put operations, emphasizing frequency tracking and least-recently-used tie-breaking.
Coding & AlgorithmsOnsite - xAIMediumSoftware EngineerDesign a Rate Limiter with Per-User Token Quotas
This question evaluates a candidate's ability to design distributed, low-latency rate limiting with heterogeneous per-user quotas, covering competencies in state modeling, consistency, caching, and scalable architecture.
System DesignOnsite - xAIMediumSoftware EngineerDesign a Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) System
This question evaluates understanding and engineering competency for retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) systems, covering offline indexing and online query planes, retrieval quality, prompt assembly, grounded generation with citations, and production monitoring; the domain is ML System Design.
ML System DesignOnsite - xAIMediumSoftware EngineerDesign a URL Shortening Service: Code Generation, Redirect Path, and Scaling
A system design question asked as a 30-minute screen with no coding: design a URL shortening service that turns long URLs into short links and redirects visitors. It tests requirement scoping, capacity estimates, collision-free code generation, a fast read path, storage, scaling and failure handling.
System DesignOnsite - xAIMediumSoftware EngineerDesign a backend for an online checkers game
This problem tests your ability to design a state-aware, real-time multiplayer system that ensures data consistency, enforces complex game rules, and manages turn-based concurrency.
System DesignOnsiteWebSocketsConcurrencyAPI Design - xAIHardSoftware EngineerDesign and Implement a URL Shortening Service
Tests your ability to design a globally distributed, highly available URL shortening service capable of handling high read/write throughput with sub-millisecond redirection latency and collision-free ID generation.
System DesignOnsitesystem-designdistributed-systemscaching - xAIMediumSoftware EngineerImplement a parallelized sort
This problem tests your ability to implement a parallelized version of Merge Sort using threads or a thread pool, focusing on partitioning, synchronization, and managing recursion depth.
Coding & AlgorithmsOnsiteAlgorithmsConcurrencyMerge Sort - xAIEasySoftware EngineerIn-Memory Key-Value Database with Nested Transactions
This question evaluates understanding of in-memory data structures, transactional semantics (including nested transactions), and algorithmic complexity for implementing a key-value store that supports efficient GET/SET and rollback/commit operations.
Coding & AlgorithmsOnsite - xAIMediumSoftware EngineerMake a Racy BankAccount Deposit Thread-Safe Without Editing the Class, in Python and Go
A concurrency question built around a BankAccount class whose deposit method reads the balance, sleeps, then writes it back. Candidates find every race, make deposits thread-safe through a subclass or wrapper without editing or copying the class, and carry the fix over to Go, which has no inheritance.
Software Engineering FundamentalsOnsite - xAIMediumSoftware EngineerMinimum Time to Run All Jobs with a Cooldown Between Identical Jobs
This question evaluates understanding of scheduling constraints, frequency analysis, and time-complexity reasoning required to minimize total execution time under per-type cooldown restrictions.
Coding & AlgorithmsOnsite - xAIEasySoftware EngineerPhone Keypad Predictive Text Suggestions
This question evaluates understanding of string-to-digit encoding, prefix-based retrieval, and efficient preprocessing for fast query-time lookup in large dictionaries.
Coding & AlgorithmsOnsite - xAIMediumSoftware EngineerSort a Large Array Using Multiple Threads
This question evaluates understanding of concurrent programming, parallel algorithm design, sorting algorithms, and merging techniques under multi-threaded execution, focusing on thread-safety, deterministic correctness despite scheduling variability, and performance trade-offs.
Coding & AlgorithmsOnsite - xAIMediumSoftware EngineerThree Exceptional Achievements, a Recent-Projects Pitch, and a Project Deep Dive
A behavioral preparation set built around project storytelling: write three one-to-two-sentence exceptional achievements, give a five-minute overview of recent projects, and present a 30-minute project deep dive followed by detailed technical questioning. It tests concise impact, ownership and depth.
Behavioral & LeadershipOnsite - xAIMediumSoftware EngineerVersioned Key-Value Store with Nested Transactions (Begin, Commit, Rollback)
This question evaluates understanding of transactional state management, nested transactions, visibility semantics for set/delete operations, and efficient in-memory data-structure manipulation.
Coding & AlgorithmsOnsite - xAIMediumSoftware EngineerWeighted LRU Cache: Capacity Counted by Item Quantity
This question evaluates understanding of cache design and LRU eviction semantics with weighted resource accounting, plus data-structure and amortized-complexity reasoning needed to support O(1) average-time operations.
Coding & AlgorithmsOnsite
xAI