Adobe interview process (2026)

Round-by-round breakdown of the Adobe software engineering interview across 4 levels and 18 rounds: interview mode, sample questions, and worked solutions.

Adobe salary & ratings · All interview processes

Software Engineering Intern / SDE Intern (Product Development, summer/2-6 month)

Difficulty: Medium · Timeline: ~1-3 weeks · Recommended prep: 2-3 months · Cooldown: ~6 months

  1. Round 0: Online Assessment (HackerRank)

    Assessment · 90-120 minutes · difficulty 2/5 · elimination round

    Mode of interview: Online assessment

    Sample question: Two Sum — Given an array of integers nums and an integer target, return the indices of the two numbers that add up to target. Exactly one valid answer exists and you may not use the same element twice. Aim for O(n) time using a hash map.

  2. Round 1: Technical Interview

    Onsite · 45-60 minutes · difficulty 2/5 · elimination round

    Mode of interview: Onsite or virtual onsite interview

    Sample question: Valid Parentheses — Given a string containing only the characters '(', ')', '{', '}', '[' and ']', determine if the input string is valid: every open bracket is closed by the same type in the correct order. Use a stack for O(n) time.

  3. Round 2: Second Technical / Technical-Managerial (drive-dependent)

    Onsite · 45-60 minutes · difficulty 2/5 · elimination round

    Mode of interview: Onsite or virtual onsite interview

  4. Round 3: HR / Behavioral (drive-dependent)

    Behavioral · 20-30 minutes · difficulty 1/5

    Mode of interview: Live behavioral interview

MTS-1 (Member of Technical Staff, entry SWE) — Noida/Bangalore

Difficulty: Medium · Timeline: ~3-6 weeks · Recommended prep: 6-10 weeks · Cooldown: ~6-12 months

  1. Round 0: Online Assessment (HackerRank)

    Assessment · ~45-50 min · difficulty 2/5 · elimination round

    Mode of interview: Online assessment

    Sample question: Number of Islands — Given an R x C grid of '1' (land) and '0' (water), count the number of islands. An island is formed by connecting adjacent lands horizontally or vertically.

  2. Round 1: Technical Round 1 — DSA + CS fundamentals

    Onsite · ~45-60 min · difficulty 3/5

    Mode of interview: Onsite or virtual onsite interview

    Sample question: Longest Substring Without Repeating Characters — Given a string, find the length of the longest substring without repeating characters.

  3. Round 2: Technical Round 2 — DSA / advanced problem solving

    Onsite · ~45-60+ min · difficulty 3/5

    Mode of interview: Onsite or virtual onsite interview

    Sample question: Unique Paths II — Given an R x C grid where 1 marks an obstacle and 0 is free, a robot starts top-left and can move only right or down. Count the number of distinct paths to the bottom-right cell.

  4. Round 3: Technical Round 3 — Low-Level / OOP Design

    Onsite · ~45-60 min · difficulty 3/5

    Mode of interview: Onsite or virtual onsite interview

    Sample question: Sort Colors (one-pass 0s/1s/2s) — Given an array of n integers valued 0, 1, or 2, sort them in-place in a single pass using O(1) extra space (Dutch National Flag).

  5. Round 4: Hiring Manager / HR round

    Behavioral · ~20-45 min · difficulty 1/5

    Mode of interview: Live behavioral interview

MTS-2 (mid-level SWE) — Noida/Bangalore

Difficulty: Medium · Timeline: ~3-6 weeks · Recommended prep: ~8-10 weeks · Cooldown: ~6-12 months

  1. Round 0: Online Assessment (HackerRank)

    Assessment · ~70-90 min · difficulty 2/5 · elimination round

    Mode of interview: Online assessment

    Sample question: Find Median from Data Stream — Design a structure that supports adding integers from a stream and, after each insertion, returns the median of all elements seen so far (average of the two middle values when the count is even). Use two heaps for O(log n) add.

  2. Round 1: Technical Rounds 1-2 — DSA deep dive

    Onsite · ~45-60 min · difficulty 3/5

    Mode of interview: Onsite or virtual onsite interview

    Sample question: Kth Largest Element in an Array — Given an integer array and an integer k, return the k-th largest element in the array (in sorted order, not the k-th distinct). Aim for a heap or quickselect solution and discuss complexity.

  3. Round 2: Technical Round 3 — Advanced DSA + LLD

    Onsite · ~45-60 min · difficulty 3/5

    Mode of interview: Onsite or virtual onsite interview

    Sample question: Design a file/asset sync + delivery service (Google Drive / Creative Cloud asset sync) — Design a service that syncs large files/creative assets from a user's desktop to the cloud, lets them access from other devices globally, supports offline edits, and handles versioning and delta upload. Discuss client-side sync, conflict resolution on reconnect/power failure, chunking, and metadata store.

  4. Round 3: Hiring Manager / Director round

    Behavioral · ~30-45 min · difficulty 1/5

    Mode of interview: Live behavioral interview

Computer Scientist / Senior Computer Scientist (senior SWE) — Bangalore/Noida

Difficulty: Hard · Timeline: ~3-5 weeks · Recommended prep: ~8-12 weeks · Cooldown: ~12 months

  1. Round 0: Recruiter / OA screen

    Phone · ~30-45 min · difficulty 2/5 · elimination round

    Mode of interview: Remote phone or video interview

  2. Round 1: Coding Round 1 — DSA

    Onsite · ~60 min · difficulty 3/5

    Mode of interview: Onsite or virtual onsite interview

    Sample question: Trapping Rain Water — Given n non-negative integers representing an elevation map where each bar has width 1, compute how much water it can trap after raining. Solve in O(n) time, O(1) extra space with two pointers.

  3. Round 2: Coding Round 2 — DSA

    Onsite · ~60 min · difficulty 3/5

    Mode of interview: Onsite or virtual onsite interview

    Sample question: Course Schedule (detect cycle in a directed graph) — Given numCourses and a list of prerequisite pairs [a, b] meaning b must be taken before a, determine whether all courses can be finished (i.e., the dependency graph has no cycle). Output 1 if possible, else 0.

  4. Round 3: System Design (HLD + small LLD)

    System_design · ~60 min · difficulty 3/5

    Mode of interview: Live system design interview

    Sample question: Design real-time collaborative document editing (Creative Cloud / Acrobat online / Google-Docs style) — Design a service where users across the globe open a document, make edits and comments, version it, and collaborate in real time (and offline). Discuss operational transform / CRDT conflict resolution, presence, versioning, sync, and scaling to many concurrent editors.

  5. Round 4: Manager / Director round (design + concurrency + fit)

    Behavioral · ~45-60 min · difficulty 3/5

    Mode of interview: Live behavioral interview

Other companies' interview processes

Worked sample solutions (code, design diagrams, and STAR answers) for every round are available in the FAANGPlus app: open interview processes.