← Interview experiences
Got the offer

SDE 2 (L3) at Google

Difficulty
Process took
6+ Weeks
Rounds
7
Format
Remote
Applied via
Company Website

How it went

  • This experience took around 2.5 months from recruiter outreach to final team matching, with feedback cycles varying from 6-7 days to 1 month after each round

What they would tell you

  • This experience took around 2.5 months from recruiter outreach to final team matching, with feedback cycles varying from 6-7 days to 1 month after each round

How to prepare

  • Be vocal about what you’re thinking. Explain your thought process out loud, step by step.
  • Always ask questions if you’re unsure, even about the smallest details. The worst thing you can do is to sit in confusion for five minutes when a quick clarification could put you right back on track. Most times, they’ll expect you to come up with your own test cases, so don’t hesitate to ask for an example if you’re lost, though they’ll likely encourage you to test your own code.

Their background

Hello everyone, let me start from my college, as i belong to tier-2 college, as i got campus placement, in a service based company, their i worked for 1.5 years, after that i worked for a start up for 3.5 years. As recruiter directly reach out to me, and the whole interview process took more then 5 weeks For Google process Screening of Resume (1) Phone Screening (1) Technical interviews(3) Googlyness round (1) Hiring Committee (1) Team Matching (1) Each round - 45 minutes to 1 hour Note: I cannot disclose the exact questions due to Google’s policy, but I’ve shared the closest matches to the problems asked.

Round by round

  1. 1

    Screening round60 min

    Recruiter reached out via phone call, discussion on my resume, my current role, & my coding profile

  2. 2

    Phone Screening60 min

    Two medium-level coding questions were asked: Similar to Find Three Consecutive Integers That Sum to a Given Number, but slightly more complex Variation of Split Array Largest Sum

  3. 3

    Onsite Round 160 min

    Question 1: Given a circular array, each element representing the amount of cash in a house, figure out the maximum amount of cash you can rob without alerting the police (you can’t rob adjacent houses). Question 2: Another similar to Dungeon Game

  4. 4

    Onsite Round 260 min

    The second round tested medium-to-hard problems: Similar to Partition Equal Subset Sum

    • Tested DP on subsets and optimization for space complexity. Similar to Cherry Pickup

    • Focused on 2D grid traversal, state representation, and memoization. Takeaways:

    • Always clarify the input constraints first.

    • Discuss how your solution scales with increasing input size.

    • Demonstrating an ability to optimize both time and space complexity is critical.

  5. 5

    Onsite Round 360 min

    Question 1: Given a list of daily stock prices, find the interval (days) with the biggest loss (largest price drop from start to end). Applied modified Kadane’s algorithm, discussed edge cases (all gains, all losses, single day). Question 2: An undirected graph with n nodes labeled from 1 to n, and an extra edge, find an edge you can remove to make the graph a tree again. I used Union-Find (Disjoint Set Union) to detect the redundant edge, handled multiple cycles, and discussed time/space complexity.

  6. 6

    Googleyness45 min

    Why do you want to work at Google?

    • Focused on impact, learning, and culture. Tell me about a time you resolved a conflict with a teammate.

    • Shared a real story, emphasized communication and empathy. Describe a project that failed or didn’t go as planned. What did you learn?

    • Talked about postmortems, transparency, and process improvements. How do you prioritize tasks with conflicting deadlines?

    • Outlined sprint planning, stakeholder communication. Describe adapting to a new/unfamiliar situation.

    • Shared personal growth and resilience. Describe a challenging work situation and how you overcame it.

    • Highlighted technical tenacity and team effort.

  7. 7

    Hiring Committee & Team Match30 min

    After completing all onsite rounds:

    • The Hiring Committee reviews interviewer feedback along with your resume. Feedback categories include No Hire, Lean Hire, Hire, Strong Hire.
    • If the application is not tied to a specific team, Google conducts a team-matching round to assign the candidate to a suitable team. Otherwise, you may skip this step.

What came up

MediumRemote5+ years

A candidate-reported account, lightly edited. Interview processes change by team and date.

Sources