Software Engineer at Linkedin

How it went

What they would tell you

How to prepare

Their background

Round by round

1. 1

   Phone Screen with DSA60 min

   I applied directly on LinkedIn, and a few weeks later, I was contacted by a recruiter for an initial phone screening. I was pretty excited at first, but like everyone else, a bit nervous too. This was the first real step. It was a relaxed conversation at the beginning. The recruiter started by asking about my background and projects. Then, we jumped into the technical part, which was mainly coding. I was asked two questions, Bulb Switcher and Shortest Word Distance II. For Bulb Switcher, I first tried to simulate the problem but quickly realized it wasn’t going to scale. Then I shifted to observing the pattern and noticed that only bulbs at perfect square positions remain on, so the final answer is just the count of perfect squares ≤ n. I explained the math behind it and why it works. For Shortest Word Distance II, I discussed using a HashMap to store the indices of each word in the list. Then, for each query, I used a two-pointer approach to find the minimum distance between the occurrences of the two words. It helped in optimizing the repeated queries. Both problems were interesting, we ended with some basic questions around my resume and past projects. The recruiter was friendly and seemed pleased with my answers, so I was moved to the next round!

   • Bulb Switcher
   • Shortest Word Distance II
2. 2

   DSA60 min

   This round was a mix of familiar and slightly tricky challenges. I was given two problems in this round, Turning Tree Upside Down and Number of Islands. The first one went smoothly. I solved it quickly, but the interviewer kept throwing in edge cases and follow-ups to make it more interesting. For the second one, I was confident at first since it was familiar, but they added a small change that made me slow down and rethink a few parts. Overall, it wasn’t perfect, but I managed to answer everything and felt good about how it went.

   • Binary Tree Upside Down
   • Number of islands
3. 3

   System Design60 min

   Coming into the third round, I had a feeling it would be system design and I was right. They asked me to design a calendar system that could handle recurring events and support multiple users. I broke down my approach starting with API design, then moved on to how I’d structure the database for recurring logic and time zones, and finally how to scale it for millions of users reliably. The interviewer liked my thought process and threw in ideas around caching and distributed databases, which led to a good back-and-forth. I could’ve gone deeper into the overall architecture, but I ran short on time.

4. 4

   Leadership and Cultural Fit60 min

   Round 4 took a softer turn, it was more about me as a person than me as an engineer. The interviewer had a warm tone, and we mostly talked about my past experiences, how I’ve handled tough moments at work, and how I collaborate in a team. They threw in a few "what if" scenarios too, like someone taking credit for my work, to understand my mindset. I focused on being honest and real, sharing what I’d actually do rather than giving a textbook answer. It felt like they were checking for culture fit, leadership potential, and empathy.

5. 5

   System Design60 min

   This was an unexpected system design round, I wasn’t told in advance, so it caught me a bit off guard. The problem was to design a real-time notification system that could scale to millions of users. I talked through the different notification types, email, push, and SMS, and how they’d be sent. I brought in message queues like Kafka and RabbitMQ for fan-out and explained how rate limiting would help prevent spamming or overloading users. The discussion went well, and the interviewer seemed happy with how I approached both scalability and edge cases.

6. 6

   Hiring Manager Round60 min

   I had my final round with the hiring manager, and it was genuinely a lovely conversation. She asked questions that were more reflective, why this role, why LinkedIn, and what motivates me in a team setting. I appreciated how warm and open she was, and I could speak freely about what I value in a job. It didn’t feel rehearsed, just real. I came out of the round feeling heard and understood.

What came up