Skip to main content

Google Software Engineer Interview Questions

Review this list of 143 Google Software Engineer interview questions and answers verified by hiring managers and candidates.
  • Google logoAsked at Google 
    7 answers
    +4

    "The company culture is very supportive and collaborative. Googlers are encouraged to be creative and innovative, and there is a lot of freedom to explore new ideas. The work is challenging and rewarding. Googlers have the opportunity to work on cutting-edge projects that have a real impact on the world. The company is committed to diversity and inclusion. Google is a great place to work for people from all backgrounds and with all different perspectives. I am confident that I would b"

    Praful B. - "The company culture is very supportive and collaborative. Googlers are encouraged to be creative and innovative, and there is a lot of freedom to explore new ideas. The work is challenging and rewarding. Googlers have the opportunity to work on cutting-edge projects that have a real impact on the world. The company is committed to diversity and inclusion. Google is a great place to work for people from all backgrounds and with all different perspectives. I am confident that I would b"See full answer

    Software Engineer
    Behavioral
    +3 more
  • Google logoAsked at Google 
    1 answer

    "I would first like to clarify the requirements and assumptions for the system. I am assuming that the system should support basic file operations such as uploading, downloading, deleting, renaming files, and viewing directory structures along with file permissions. The file size can range from around 1MB to 1GB, and the system is expected to be read heavy, meaning downloads will be more frequent than uploads. The system should support a large scale, for example around 10 million total users with"

    Yashasvi C. - "I would first like to clarify the requirements and assumptions for the system. I am assuming that the system should support basic file operations such as uploading, downloading, deleting, renaming files, and viewing directory structures along with file permissions. The file size can range from around 1MB to 1GB, and the system is expected to be read heavy, meaning downloads will be more frequent than uploads. The system should support a large scale, for example around 10 million total users with"See full answer

    Software Engineer
    System Design
    +1 more
  • Google logoAsked at Google 
    4 answers
    +1

    "We will not always have all the required data to make a decision quickly. We need to work with ambiguity effectively by tying up the available facts with intuition."

    Sankar S. - "We will not always have all the required data to make a decision quickly. We need to work with ambiguity effectively by tying up the available facts with intuition."See full answer

    Software Engineer
    Behavioral
    +3 more
  • Google logoAsked at Google 
    10 answers
    Video answer for 'Explain how to find a target sum in an array.'
    +6

    "A recursive backtracking solution in python. def changeSigns(nums: List[int], S: int) -> int: res = [] n = len(nums) def backtrack(index, curr, arr): if curr == S and len(arr) == n: res.append(arr[:]) return if index >= len(nums): return for i in range(index, n): add +ve number arr.append(nums[i]) backtrack(i+1, curr + nums[i], arr) arr.pop() "

    Yugaank K. - "A recursive backtracking solution in python. def changeSigns(nums: List[int], S: int) -> int: res = [] n = len(nums) def backtrack(index, curr, arr): if curr == S and len(arr) == n: res.append(arr[:]) return if index >= len(nums): return for i in range(index, n): add +ve number arr.append(nums[i]) backtrack(i+1, curr + nums[i], arr) arr.pop() "See full answer

    Software Engineer
    Data Structures & Algorithms
    +1 more
  • Google logoAsked at Google 
    11 answers
    +8

    "This is a great question! If you don't mind, I'd love to list 3 strengths and weaknesses then dive a little deeper on one of each of them. I think my three greatest strengths are: Empathy Openness to feedback Drive And three weaknesses I have been working to strengthen are: Sometimes my desire to achieve can put me at risk of overcommitting Communicating status to the right stakeholders at the appropriate time Creating detailed and strategic lists of priorities so I can meet th"

    Adam M. - "This is a great question! If you don't mind, I'd love to list 3 strengths and weaknesses then dive a little deeper on one of each of them. I think my three greatest strengths are: Empathy Openness to feedback Drive And three weaknesses I have been working to strengthen are: Sometimes my desire to achieve can put me at risk of overcommitting Communicating status to the right stakeholders at the appropriate time Creating detailed and strategic lists of priorities so I can meet th"See full answer

    Software Engineer
    Behavioral
    +3 more
  • 🧠 Want an expert answer to a question? Saving questions lets us know what content to make next.

  • Google logoAsked at Google 
    4 answers
    +1

    "Provided an example from my work history where I asked to move the Go-live date to prevent launch date failure."

    Namu - "Provided an example from my work history where I asked to move the Go-live date to prevent launch date failure."See full answer

    Software Engineer
    Behavioral
    +2 more
  • Google logoAsked at Google 
    1 answer

    "These are a set of utilities used to manage the heap memory as part of an application. The C standard library implements these functions. malloc(bytes) takes a number of bytes and returns a pointer to the start of the allocated buffer. If the allocation failed, a null pointer is returned instead. calloc(count, size) behaves like malloc(count * size), but also zero-initializes the allocated buffer, assuming the allocation succeeded. realloc(ptr, size) takes a pointer to a previously al"

    J R. - "These are a set of utilities used to manage the heap memory as part of an application. The C standard library implements these functions. malloc(bytes) takes a number of bytes and returns a pointer to the start of the allocated buffer. If the allocation failed, a null pointer is returned instead. calloc(count, size) behaves like malloc(count * size), but also zero-initializes the allocated buffer, assuming the allocation succeeded. realloc(ptr, size) takes a pointer to a previously al"See full answer

    Software Engineer
    Coding
    +1 more
  • Google logoAsked at Google 
    3 answers

    "I followed STAR format"

    Shashikant A. - "I followed STAR format"See full answer

    Software Engineer
    Behavioral
    +3 more
  • "Function signature for reference: def calculate(servers: List[int], k: int) -> int: ... To resolve this, you can use binary search considering left=0 and right=max(servers) * k so Example: servers=[1,4,5] First server handle 1 request in let's say 1 second, second 4 seconds and last 5 seconds. k=10 So I want to know the minimal time to process 10 requests Get the mid for timeline mid = (left+right)//2 -> mid is 25 Check how many we could process 25//1 = 25 25//4=6 25//5=5 so 25 + 6 +"

    Babaa - "Function signature for reference: def calculate(servers: List[int], k: int) -> int: ... To resolve this, you can use binary search considering left=0 and right=max(servers) * k so Example: servers=[1,4,5] First server handle 1 request in let's say 1 second, second 4 seconds and last 5 seconds. k=10 So I want to know the minimal time to process 10 requests Get the mid for timeline mid = (left+right)//2 -> mid is 25 Check how many we could process 25//1 = 25 25//4=6 25//5=5 so 25 + 6 +"See full answer

    Software Engineer
    Coding
  • Google logoAsked at Google 
    2 answers
    Video answer for 'Design a key-value store.'

    "Simple file system ( Hash Map , LSM trees), and consistent hashing. I failed to discuss about conflicts ( Versioning)"

    V V. - "Simple file system ( Hash Map , LSM trees), and consistent hashing. I failed to discuss about conflicts ( Versioning)"See full answer

    Software Engineer
    System Design
    +2 more
  • Google logoAsked at Google 
    5 answers
    +1

    "DNNs can learn hierarchical features, with each layer learning progressively more abstract features, and generalizes better. SNNs are better for simplier problems involving smaller datasets and if low latency is required."

    Louie Z. - "DNNs can learn hierarchical features, with each layer learning progressively more abstract features, and generalizes better. SNNs are better for simplier problems involving smaller datasets and if low latency is required."See full answer

    Software Engineer
    Concept
    +3 more
  • Google logoAsked at Google 
    1 answer

    "performance issues and sudden spikes on input requests by scaling techniques and optimization."

    Srini K. - "performance issues and sudden spikes on input requests by scaling techniques and optimization."See full answer

    Software Engineer
    Behavioral
    +6 more
  • Google logoAsked at Google 
    1 answer

    "One time at Lifetime Fitness 2019, One student was throwing a lot of towels in the counter which made things very disorganized, then I made a compromise with my coworker to put 2 towels at a time and then it worked well because it made the workspace very organized."

    Amparo L. - "One time at Lifetime Fitness 2019, One student was throwing a lot of towels in the counter which made things very disorganized, then I made a compromise with my coworker to put 2 towels at a time and then it worked well because it made the workspace very organized."See full answer

    Software Engineer
    Behavioral
    +2 more
  • Software Engineer
    Data Structures & Algorithms
    +1 more
  • Google logoAsked at Google 
    3 answers

    "Situation: I led a critical initiative to re-architect the high volume customer data platform. The system handled over 90 PB of records handling around 70 billion customer records daily and was foundational to customer data capabilities across multiple enterprise products. The existing architecture faced significant challenges around latency, accuracy, and scalability, and any disruption would directly impact global customers and downstream systems. Task: I was responsible for leading t"

    Krish M. - "Situation: I led a critical initiative to re-architect the high volume customer data platform. The system handled over 90 PB of records handling around 70 billion customer records daily and was foundational to customer data capabilities across multiple enterprise products. The existing architecture faced significant challenges around latency, accuracy, and scalability, and any disruption would directly impact global customers and downstream systems. Task: I was responsible for leading t"See full answer

    Software Engineer
    Behavioral
    +4 more
  • Google logoAsked at Google 
    5 answers
    +2

    "delete"

    David P. - "delete"See full answer

    Software Engineer
    Behavioral
    +2 more
  • Google logoAsked at Google 
    4 answers
    +1

    "in simple words, linear regression helps in predicting the value whereas logistics regression helps in predicting the binary classification. But lets talk through some example Linear regression model: E-commerce website pricing recommendation engine is built on linear regression model where we do have some variables such as competitor price, internal economics and consumer demand etc when we put this in a supervised learning model, it helps in predicting prices Logistics regression model"

    Anonymous Aardvark - "in simple words, linear regression helps in predicting the value whereas logistics regression helps in predicting the binary classification. But lets talk through some example Linear regression model: E-commerce website pricing recommendation engine is built on linear regression model where we do have some variables such as competitor price, internal economics and consumer demand etc when we put this in a supervised learning model, it helps in predicting prices Logistics regression model"See full answer

    Software Engineer
    Concept
    +2 more
  • Google logoAsked at Google 
    7 answers
    Video answer for 'Write functions to serialize and deserialize a list of strings.'
    +4

    "One thing is not clear to me, We encoded the length of the word to a character, but the max number which can be converted to char ascii is 255. How will it work for length till 65535?"

    Curly T. - "One thing is not clear to me, We encoded the length of the word to a character, but the max number which can be converted to char ascii is 255. How will it work for length till 65535?"See full answer

    Software Engineer
    Data Structures & Algorithms
    +1 more
  • Google logoAsked at Google 
    2 answers

    "Okay so the objective is to describe a product which I think is poorly designed despite of what market sentiments are around this and how the product is performing currently. Okay understood, so the way I would like to go about it is first I will state what are the factors which I look in a product to tell it is a good product. Then will see how a particular product doesn’t follow this and that's why I called it a poorly designed product. For me a product is great if it is having these qualities"

    Anonymous Muskox - "Okay so the objective is to describe a product which I think is poorly designed despite of what market sentiments are around this and how the product is performing currently. Okay understood, so the way I would like to go about it is first I will state what are the factors which I look in a product to tell it is a good product. Then will see how a particular product doesn’t follow this and that's why I called it a poorly designed product. For me a product is great if it is having these qualities"See full answer

    Software Engineer
    Product Design
    +1 more
  • Google logoAsked at Google 
    8 answers
    +5

    "A few months ago I joined a micro-services platform engineering team as their manager, at that time my team was struggling to deliver towards an upcoming production deadline for a customer facing product. Production date had been moved 5 times already and there were about 40% of product features which were remaining to be tested and signed off to move to production . I was made responsible to deliver the release of this product within the deadline and turnaround the software delivery throughput."

    Shuchi A. - "A few months ago I joined a micro-services platform engineering team as their manager, at that time my team was struggling to deliver towards an upcoming production deadline for a customer facing product. Production date had been moved 5 times already and there were about 40% of product features which were remaining to be tested and signed off to move to production . I was made responsible to deliver the release of this product within the deadline and turnaround the software delivery throughput."See full answer

    Software Engineer
    Behavioral
    +2 more
Showing 41-60 of 143
Exponent

Get updates in your inbox with the latest tips, job listings, and more.

Follow Us

Products
Courses
Interview Questions
Interview Experiences
Popular articles
Guides
Coaching
For Partners
Company
Exponent © 2026
Terms of Service | Privacy