Get a Job at Meta: Interview Process and Top Questions

Learn how to prepare for Meta interviews with this in-depth guide.

Would you like to work at Meta, one of the biggest tech companies in the world?

Meta’s mission is to connect the world. It has built massively successful products that you probably use daily, such as:

• Social media platforms, Facebook, Instagram, and Threads
• Virtual reality (VR) hardware and software, including Quest
• Communication applications, like Messenger and WhatsApp

Operating and innovating products used by billions of users takes a large and dedicated team of product and business people, software and machine learning engineers, data scientists, and others.

You'll face several challenging interviews if you want to join the Meta team.

Below, we summarize the Meta interview process and top questions you should expect to answer.

Meta Interview Process

Meta interviews can take anywhere from 4–8 weeks and involve:

• A screening call with a recruiter,
• A domain-specific screening call,
• A complete final loop, with a mix of domain-specific and behavioral rounds.

Meta is invested in many technologies poised to shape the future. Meta prides itself on hiring talented people who can learn and adapt rather than just be domain experts. It values the unique perspective you bring as an individual and encourages authenticity in interviews. 

Meta is known for being relatively flat rather than hierarchical, so you’ll likely be interviewed by a mix of peers, higher-ups, and cross-functional partners. 

Recruiter phone screen

The first step is a 20–30-minute phone call with a recruiter. This first screen looks similar for all roles—recruiters want to confirm your basic qualifications and culture fit. 

You’ll be asked light behavioral interview questions about your background, resume, projects, and accomplishments. Expect questions like:

• Why Meta?
• Tell me about yourself.
• What’s an obstacle you’ve overcome? 

After answering some behavioral questions, you’ll have a chance to discuss the role and responsibilities you’d be taking on and to ask any questions about the rest of the interview process. 

Technical screen for engineering roles 

The second step of Meta’s interview process is a domain-specific screen. For engineers, this is a 45-minute live coding challenge on CoderPad. 

Expect to spend the first few minutes making introductions and answering brief questions about your resume. The bulk of the interview is typically two medium—to hard-level data structure and algorithm questions. 

You’ll be expected to explain your thinking and justify your approach as you code, so practice clear communication.

Interviewers might jump in with additional questions or challenges or ask how you’d optimize your solution. 

Technical screen for data roles 

Data scientists can expect a 45-minute tech screen with medium- to hard-level questions. The data screen focuses on SQL, statistics, and product sense questions. 

Practice writing hard-level SQL queries, optimizing, and debugging queries. Also, practice talking through product-sense case studies to ensure great communication.

Technical screen for product roles

For product roles, the tech screen is a 45-minute interview that assesses your product sense and analytical skills. 

The product sense question is likely a hypothetical case question. You might be asked to describe a product you think is great and why, or you might be given a scenario and asked what you would do as a PM or CEO at that company. 

For the analytical questions, you’ll likely get a situation and be asked to identify and prioritize opportunities, build a plan of action, and explain how you’d execute it. The question may be vague, but you’ll be expected to give a set of metrics you’d track to measure success.

Meta is looking for PMs with strong critical thinking skills, an ability to prioritize and make difficult tradeoffs, and an adaptability to change. Highlight these skills when answering your tech screen questions to stand out.

Final round

Once you pass the recruiter and screening interviews, you’ll be scheduled for your final round, which is typically conducted virtually.

For most roles, this consists of 3–5 rounds, often broken up into 3 categories. For example, for engineers, it would be coding, design, and behavioral rounds.

Evaluation and hiring decision

After the interview process, a candidate review meeting is held by the hiring team to review the pool of applicants. They will select the candidate they recommend for hire and pass that applicant’s information along to the hiring committee. The hiring committee, typically separate from the team making the hiring recommendation, then makes the final decision.

If you’ve done well, expect to hear back from Meta—and hopefully, receive an offer—within 1–2 weeks.

Top Meta Interview Questions

These are examples of real interview questions asked at Meta as reported by candidates.

Coding

• Given an array of numbers where every number occurs twice except one, how would you find the unique number in O(log n) time?
• Find the number of users who called three or more people in the last week.
• Find the sum of all elements in a binary tree that fall within the range [low, high], where 'low' and 'high' are integers.
• Merge intervals
• Given a head node of a linked list, delete k-th node from the end of the list.

Data science

• Imagine you're a data scientist at Meta. There's been a sudden 10% drop in Facebook's daily post views. How would you investigate?
• How would you measure the success of Facebook dating?
• How would you evaluate the impact of fake news on Facebook users?
• Imagine you are a data scientist for Instagram. How would you balance ads and follower posts, and how would you monitor its effectiveness?
• Why should Meta invest in noise-cancelling headphones, and what goals would you set for this product?

System design

• Design TikTok.
• Design an Amazon price tracker.
• How would you design 'Hot Topics' on Instagram?
• Design a web crawler to download content from www.example.com without detection.
• Design Facebook Messenger.

Product design

• Design a product for borrowing and lending.
• Design a product that helps people find contractors.
• Design Netflix for kids.
• How would you design parking features on Google Maps?
• Imagine you're a PM for Meta. Design a product for Volunteering. What would you build? Why?

Product management

• What product that you led are you most proud of and why?
• Tell me about a time when you proposed an idea that was not agreed on.
• How have you managed risk in a project?
• Tell me about a time when you used data to convince stakeholders.
• How do you prioritize competing features?

Behavioral

• Tell me about yourself.
• Tell me about a time you made a mistake.
• Tell me about a time when you received negative feedback and how you handled it.
• Can you provide an example of how you manage conflict?
• Tell me about a time you made a bold and difficult decision.

Meta’s Interview Loops Explained

Behavioral

The behavioral round is included in the final loop for all Meta candidates. It’s usually 45 minutes and much more conversational and open-ended than your other rounds. Expect many questions on how you’ve contributed to cross-functional teams, how you resolve conflict, how you take initiatives, how you learn from your mistakes, and how you’re a great leader.

At Meta, cross-functional teams consist of engineers, product managers, designers, data scientists, and more. Meta wants candidates who work well cross-functionally as both leaders and team players. Demonstrate your ability to communicate well with others and align on common goals while making sure all perspectives are considered. 

To ace behavioral interview questions, familiarize yourself with Meta’s core values and prepare anecdotes from your past experiences that highlight those values.

Coding

All Meta engineering candidates face coding challenges in multiple rounds. Most candidates get 2 coding final rounds that are similar to the tech screen, lasting 45 minutes each. 

Meta looks for communication skills, great problem-solving, the ability to write clean, efficient code, and the ability to verify your solutions by testing edge cases.

Expect the following topics in your Meta coding rounds:

• Arrays
• Stacks and queues
• Hash tables
• Graphs and trees
• Recursion
• Sorting algorithms
• Heaps
• Iteration
• Divide and conquer
• DFS/BFS

Follow these tips to prepare for Meta’s coding rounds:

• Practice writing code without a compiler or a debugger.
• Study a wide variety of problems rather than going deep into a specific area.
• Practice with a wide variety of algorithms and data structures. 
• Practice timing yourself while you talk through your answer.

System design 

System design is part of the final round for all engineers. Interviewers want to see engineers architect a solution to a high-level problem without forgetting crucial details. Expect to be assessed on your:

• Problem navigation: Can you break down a problem and organize it? Can you recognize the constraints and identify potential solutions?
• Solution design: Can you work towards a solution that addresses the critical aspects of the problem while ignoring unimportant details?
• Technical excellence: Can you dive deep when needed? Can you identify important dependencies and trade-offs?
• Technical communication: Can you articulate your ideas clearly, take direction and feedback, and build? 

Here are some tips for acing your system design round:

• Study design patterns for Meta’s software systems. How do those patterns apply to the problem space you’ve been given? How would you design it from scratch?
• Avoid jumping straight to optimal solutions. Start simple, talk through trade-offs, and improve as you go. 
• Read Meta’s engineering blog to learn about different approaches that have worked (or failed) in the real world and why.
• Practice zooming in and out on the details. Repeatedly go back to business objectives when stuck. What are you trying to do and why?

Product management

For the product management final rounds at Meta, expect similar product sense, analytical, and execution case questions as the tech screen, as well as a product design round. 

Product roles will face a product design challenge to test your ability to clarify a goal, define the target audience, brainstorm ideas, and propose a solution that aligns with business objectives. Make sure you thoroughly communicate and talk through your design process to prove your structured thinking, user empathy, and how you decide on trade-offs.

Interviewers want to see leadership, intentional design choices, business savvy, creative problem-solving, and an understanding of the product landscape, as well as skills in prioritization and execution.

Data science

In the data science final round, expect similar topics as the tech screen, but going more in-depth. So expect hard-difficulty SQL questions and statistics questions. You’ll be assessed on your ability to write complex SQL queries with joins, subqueries, and aggregations, and to optimize and debug queries.

You’ll also get a product sense case question. Be sure to clarify the problem, define success metrics, empathize with the user, discuss trade-offs, and use data to inform all of your decisions. In answering, communicate clearly and thoroughly. Communicating more, rather than less, shows off your problem-solving and decision-making processes.

The last part is experimentation design, to assess your ability to design efficient and scientifically sound experiments that result in easy-to-interpret, actionable results. The experimental design questions center around the ability to design scientifically valid, efficient, and interpretable experiments. 

Practice asking yourself how you would test and analyze certain things in your daily life and in the products you use. Be sure to practice establishing relationships between the right variables when you have a business question in mind.

Topics to study to prepare for your data science round at Meta:

• Statistics
• Probability
• A/B testing
• Experimentation
• ML concepts
• Product strategy
• Metrics

Meta Interview Tips

Meta wants you to do well.

Meta recruiters are known to be helpful and flexible and will share in-depth interview preparation guides with you before you enter the full loop. If you’re interviewing for a more junior role, you’ll have the opportunity to book a mock coding interview with a Meta engineer. You can find helpful blogs, videos, and guides on Meta’s careers page. 

Meta looks for employees who can work well cross-functionally.

Cross-functional teams of engineers, product managers, designers, and data roles are essential to Meta’s success. Notice that many of Meta’s core values speak to the importance of collaboration. Your cross-functional collaboration skills will be assessed throughout the whole interview experience, so prepare stories that demonstrate that skill. 

It’s okay to say “I don’t know.”

You should be competent enough to do the job you’re interviewing for, but Meta acknowledges that no one knows everything. If you get stuck, feel free to say “I don’t know,” but follow up with “Here’s how I would go about finding out” or “Here’s an alternative solution” to highlight your adaptability and ability to learn and problem-solve.

Study Meta’s core products.

Not all companies ask design questions about their products, but Meta does. Download Instagram, WhatsApp, and/or Messenger, and get a sense of the experience, so you have intelligent answers prepared in case you’re asked details about these products or how you’d improve them. 

Meta’s many different blogs are also great resources to learn about the infrastructure behind these products and how they work. 

Get a referral from a Meta employee.

Meta is one of the biggest tech companies in the world. A great way to increase your visibility is to get a referral from a Meta employee.

FAQs

How hard are Meta’s technical interviews?

Meta’s technical interviews are known to be challenging. For coding rounds, aim to solve medium and hard problems in about 35 minutes. For system design interviews, aim to solve them in roughly the same amount of time, including discussions around scalability, risk mitigation, and any important edge cases. 

That said, Meta doesn’t expect you to know everything or be perfect. They’re looking for candidates who can lean into ambiguity and get the job done when faced with obstacles. 

Watch this software engineering interview Q&A session with Meta engineers to understand the format of coding challenges and learn tips and best practices. 

How long does it take to hear back after Meta interviews?

Meta recruiters are known to be fairly responsive. You can expect to hear a final answer within 1–2 weeks after the full loop interview, but if you haven’t heard back in that time, reach out to your recruiter. 

What is Meta’s cooling-off period for interviews? 

Meta doesn’t have an official cooling-off period, as long as you apply for a different role. Some teams ask you to wait a year, mainly to give yourself time to improve your skills and do more interview preparation. But most people suggest waiting 3–6 months before re-applying to Meta, regardless of the role. 

How should I prepare for a Meta interview? 

• Practice answering the most common Meta interview questions.
• Read through our Meta interview guides.
• Book a 1:1 coaching session with a Meta interview coach.
• Book a mock interview.
• Explore interview prep courses for engineering, product management, data science, and many other roles.

More Meta Interview Prep Resources

Exponent has extensive resources to prepare you to feel your best when it comes time for your interview at Meta:

💬 Brush up on interview questions asked at Meta

📖 Read through these role-specific Meta interview guides