Spotify Software Engineer Interview Guide

The gist

As Spotify continues to scale and innovate new ways for over 600 million listeners to access podcasts, audiobooks, and music worldwide, it sees its developers as key members of a band, playing in harmony to keep fans and artists safe, secure, and above all, creative.

The software engineer interview loops at Spotify are team-independent, so there’s variance among each team’s process.  That being said, what remains consistent throughout the teams is that Spotify tends to prefer software engineers with experience in at least some of the following:

• Building and maintaining data pipelines
• Scalable machine learning
• Large-scale services (preferably in Java)
• Distributed, high-volume services
• Traffic management

What does a Spotify Software Engineer do?

Spotify Software Engineers directly impact hundreds of millions of listeners daily. Since Spotify continuously innovates the listening experience, engineers might be hired to iterate on features that are already in production—like sending messages to listeners using Machine Learning or creating algorithms to better personalize custom playlists—or work on new projects, like Spotify’s Developer Portal or international compliance.

Between the wide variety of projects, visible impact on users, and reportedly low-hierarchy workplace, developers at Spotify note that it’s a great place to hone their craft and experiment.

The average total compensation across software engineering levels at Spotify is:

• (Entry-level) Software Engineer: $140K
• Software Engineer: $158K
• Senior Software Engineer: $221K
• Principal Software Engineer: $261K

Before you apply

• Spend some time in the Spotify App. Be ready to discuss your favorite current features and your favorite artists or playlists.
• Practice speaking about technical concepts in a way that a nontechnical person can understand. Being right at Spotify isn't enough. You have to be right and clear enough that anyone (regardless of expertise) can understand.
• Research recent interview questions asked at Spotify.
• Check out the Spotify Engineering Blog so you can speak about current Spotify works in progress.

Interview process

This guide's questions are based on developers' experiences interviewing for mid-level roles. If you’re above the mid-level, the adjustments you can expect are more system design and less coding.

Spotify is a very popular company for job applicants but has far fewer employees than other large tech companies like Microsoft, Amazon, or Meta. The interview process at Spotify is competitive and tends to move relatively quickly. Applicants mention that for most software engineering roles, interviewing can take between 2 and 5 weeks, with some senior+ and international candidates facing potential delays of up to 2 months.

Though Spotify teams have differing processes, applicants generally describe three interview stages:

1. Recruiter phone screen to ensure you meet the minimum requirements for the role.
2. Technical screens, usually done on Mural or Coderpad.
3. A day of on-site interviews, potentially including:

• A difficult coding round focused on the domain of the role.
• A system design interview.
• A case study based on a real scenario the team has faced recently.
• A values interview that often serves as the "final" interview.

Comparing the philosophy of technical rounds, Spotify and Google primarily care about your thought process, whereas Meta and Amazon mainly care about your results. Applicants also notice getting asked more interpersonal and behavioral questions throughout the interview process, unlike interviews at other tech companies.

1. Recruiter

This call is typically 30 minutes long and includes some light technical questions. The focus is mainly on behavioral questions and typical recruiter logistics questions.

Be ready to talk about your previous work history and skills as they relate to the job description and why you’re passionate about large-scale streaming and digital media (aka “why Spotify”). Founder and CEO Daniel Ek says he started Spotify because he “realized that you can never legislate away from piracy,” and Spotify interviewers are looking for engineers who can zoom out and see tech in the context of supporting art and artists.

Sample questions include:

• Do you prefer to work in a team or by yourself?
• What’s your biggest weakness?
• Tell me about yourself.
• What is one thing you would change about Spotify’s curation?
• How do you approach collaboration?
• Why Spotify?
• Why are you leaving your current role?
• Are you adaptable? Are you collaborative? Are you driven? How do you know?
• What do you do to keep your ego in check on a team?
• What artists are you currently listening to?

2. Technical screen

During this round, you’ll complete a task on Coderpad or Mural, typically lasting 45 minutes to an hour.

Topics include:

• Coding
• Binary Search
• Graphs and trees
• Bubble Sorting algorithms
• SQL Joins (note: some applicants noted they were also asked about SQL joins during their on-site interviews)

Sample questions include:

• Given an unsorted array like this as input: [ex: 3,2,5,4,8,10,9,100, 102, 101] Write a function to find the longest sequence.
• Given a list of strings, find the most common string in the list. More senior applicants were also asked what to do when the list doesn't fit in memory and to test cases for it.

3. On-site

These four rounds at the on-site are designed to introduce you to potential team members, managers, and executive stakeholders. Despite the name, some applicants completed these over Zoom. If you live near a Spotify office, though, expect to come in.

a. Second coding problem

This task, typically 45 minutes to an hour long, may be more difficult than your first one. However, some applicants mention that the tasks don’t escalate in difficulty and may instead be designed to assess how you communicate about your code rather than how quickly or cleanly you can program.

Interviewers may sometimes ask follow-up questions about how your answers relate to your previous experience (for example: “Have you used this before?” or “Have you ever had a time when this didn’t work?”) that are semi-behavioral, so be prepared to answer these as you complete the whiteboard task.

Topics include:

• SQL Joins and Aggregate Functions
• Ranking and Filtering in SQL
• Pandas questions

Questions:

• What's the use case for an activation function?
• How does the stack work, as opposed to the heap?
• Create a series from an array in Pandas with a custom index.
• Implement a class to represent a Queue.

b. System design

This interview, typically an hour long, is about how you plan a project from beginning to end. At Spotify, you may still be asked behavioral-adjacent follow-up questions at this stage, like “Have you used this tool in personal projects?” or “How would you delegate work on this project with another developer?” So, be prepared to communicate clearly throughout.

Questions:

Design the backend architecture for Spotify.

Asked at Microsoft, Spotify 

See question

• Design a system that allows Spotify users to add a custom picture to their playlist. Other users should be able to view this picture as well, but only the playlist owner can edit it.
• How would you design a system like Twitter?

c. Case study

In this hour-long call, you’ll be problem-solving an issue in real time that’s relevant to recent tasks for your potential role or team. Some applicants completed this in a paired programming environment, while others said their experience designing a solution was closer to a traditional system design interview. Again, many applicants have felt that this interview assessed how they’d communicate as part of a team rather than how quickly they could solve the issue.

Sample questions include:

What is an API and how does it work?

Asked at Apple, Meta, Revolut + 2 more 

View 5 answers

d. Values interview

This hour-long round is focused on making sure that the way you solve problems aligns with Spotify’s Values. You may be asked a lightly technical question here, though most applicants wrote that these questions are, again, largely behavioral and centered on problem-solving, so you can think of this interview as being comparable to a final interview anywhere else. Make sure to give answers that reflect your quantifiable impact.

Sample questions include:

• Tell us about a project from your resume. Can you describe how you delivered it from start to finish?
• What's your approach to cross-functional collaboration?
• Name a time when you had to make a product decision, but stakeholders wanted different things. What did you do?
• Tell me about a difficult problem you solved with a simple solution.
• Can you describe a product launch you worked on? What was your involvement, and what was the end result?
• What artists are you currently listening to? (Many applicants have said they were asked this as a final question.)

Additional resources

• Take our software engineering interview course to level up your software engineering skills.
• Get coaching and actionable feedback from software engineers at the level you aspire to land an offer for.
• Practice with mock interviews on the most common types of problems.

FAQs

What can I expect from my interview at Spotify?

When you interview at Spotify, expect a strong focus on your communication and collaboration skills. Candidates have said that typically, it’s a multiweek process focusing on coding and behavioral skills, with at least six interviews.

On average, how much do Spotify Software Engineers typically make?

The average total compensation across software engineering levels at Spotify is:

• (Entry-level) Software Engineer: $140K
• Software Engineer: $158K
• Senior Software Engineer: $221K
• Principal Software Engineer: $261K

How long is the typical Spotify interview process?

The interview process at Spotify is typically between 2–5 weeks, with some higher-level or international candidates mentioning waiting around 2 months to hear a final verdict.

How should I prepare for a software engineering interview at Spotify?

• Make sure you can talk about your favorite artist or playlist.
• Read the Spotify Engineering blog or listen to the podcast (on Spotify, of course!) so you know what features are in the pipeline for your potential team.
• Familiarize yourself with Spotify’s Values, and practice weaving these values into your interview answers.
• Practice communicating clearly, reflectively, and concisely about your previous experiences since you��ll likely face behavioral questions at every stage of the process.

Will I have in-person interviews?

If you’re near a Spotify office you may be asked to do your coding interviews on-site, but if you get the job, the Work from Anywhere policy means you can probably work remotely.

What happens if I get rejected?

If you get rejected for one role, Spotify recommends waiting six months before reapplying for it. That said, you can apply for as many roles as you’re qualified for at one time.