Software Engineer (L4) at Google

How it went

What they would tell you

How to prepare

Round by round

1. 1

   Phone Screen60 min

   This round was conducted by an engineer from Google Berlin. The question, while appearing simple on the surface, required thoughtful arrangement logic Question Asked: Given an m x n matrix and a list of items with their quantities, arrange them such that similar items are placed adjacent, either horizontally or vertically. Initially, it seemed like a graph problem, but it was more about smart distribution and spatial placement strategy. I broke down the problem, discussed edge cases, and coded a working solution with time and space analysis.

2. 2

   Technical Interview 160 min

   This interviewer was from Google India. Question Asked: In a cloud storage system, you can create disks and take snapshots. A snapshot can only be deleted after all disks derived from it (and their descendants) are deleted.Given disk-snapshot relations, return a valid deletion sequence. After some discussion and clarification, I recognized it as a DAG (Directed Acyclic Graph) problem. I applied topological sorting, discussed complexity, and wrote clean code.

3. 3

   Technical Interview 260 min

   Question Asked: Given a list of 2D boxes with height, width, and depth, determine the maximum number of boxes that can be nested inside each other. A classic DP problem often likened to Longest Increasing Subsequence in 2D. I could only come up with the brute-force solution and explained that, but I couldn’t progress toward the optimized version in time.

4. 4

   Technical Interview 360 min

   Question Asked: Given a neighborhood of blocks, each containing colored houses (numbers), rearrange them so that each block contains uniquely colored houses sorted in increasing order. I tried a frequency + bucket sort strategy, and had a near-working approach. In the final minutes, I realized a binary search could help optimize placement, but I ran out of time before I could refactor and implement it.

5. 5

   Googliness & Leadership Round60 min

   It focused on:

   • My background and past projects
   • Times I showed leadership, adaptability, and learning
   • Collaboration and ownership stories The interviewer was warm and curious. It felt more like a conversation than an assessment.

What came up