Airbnb interview process (2026)

Round-by-round breakdown of the Airbnb software engineering interview across 3 levels and 15 rounds: interview mode, sample questions, and worked solutions.

Airbnb salary & ratings · All interview processes

SDE Intern (off-campus / referral / occasional on-campus; Bengaluru or India-remote)

Difficulty: Medium · Timeline: 2-4 weeks · Recommended prep: 6-10 weeks · Cooldown: ~6-12 months

  1. Round 0: Online Assessment (HackerRank)

    Assessment · ~60-90 min · difficulty 2/5 · elimination round

    Mode of interview: Online assessment · HackerRank

    Sample question: Flatten 2D Vector — Design an iterator that flattens a 2D vector. Implement Vector2D(vector<vector<int>>) with next() returning the next element in row-major order and hasNext() indicating whether more elements remain, correctly skipping empty inner lists.

  2. Round 1: Technical Coding Round 1 (live)

    Phone · ~45 min · difficulty 2/5

    Mode of interview: Remote phone or video interview

    Sample question: Pour Water — Given an elevation map `heights`, drop `volume` units of water one unit at a time at index `k`. Each unit settles by the rule: move left to the lowest reachable position that is strictly lower; else move right to the lowest reachable strictly-lower position; else it rests at k. Return the final heights.

  3. Round 2: Technical Coding Round 2 (live)

    Onsite · ~45 min · difficulty 3/5

    Mode of interview: Onsite or virtual onsite interview

    Sample question: Combination Sum — Given an array of distinct positive integers `candidates` and a target integer `target`, return all unique combinations of candidates that sum to target. The same number may be chosen an unlimited number of times.

  4. Round 3: Behavioral / values round

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

    Mode of interview: Live behavioral interview

Software Engineer (G8 / SDE-II, India)

Difficulty: Hard · Timeline: ~3-5 weeks · Recommended prep: 8-12 weeks · Cooldown: ~6-12 months

  1. Round 0: Recruiter Screen

    Phone · 30-45 minutes · difficulty 1/5 · elimination round

    Mode of interview: Remote phone or video interview

  2. Round 1: Technical Screen / Online Assessment

    Assessment · 45-60 min · difficulty 3/5 · elimination round

    Mode of interview: Online assessment

    Sample question: Maximum Profit in Job Scheduling — You are given n jobs, each with a startTime, endTime, and profit. No two chosen jobs may overlap in time (a job that starts exactly when another ends is allowed). Return the maximum total profit obtainable by selecting a non-overlapping subset of jobs.

  3. Round 2: Onsite — Coding

    Onsite · 45-60 minutes · difficulty 3/5

    Mode of interview: Onsite or virtual onsite interview

    Sample question: Alien Dictionary — Given a list of words sorted lexicographically by the rules of an unknown alien language, derive a valid ordering of the alien alphabet. Return the letters in a valid order (any valid topological order), or an empty string if no valid ordering exists (cycle, or a longer word appearing before its own prefix).

  4. Round 3: Onsite — Code Review

    Other · 45-60 minutes · difficulty 3/5

    Mode of interview: Interview format varies by team

  5. Round 4: Onsite — System Design / Architecture

    System_design · 45-60 minutes · difficulty 3/5

    Mode of interview: Live system design interview

    Sample question: Design a cache system (distributed in-memory cache) — Design a distributed in-memory cache (Memcached/Redis-style) usable by Airbnb services: support get/put with TTL, an eviction policy (e.g. LRU), sharding across nodes with consistent hashing, replication for availability, and cache-invalidation/consistency with the backing store. Discuss hot-key handling and failure of a cache node.

  6. Round 5: Onsite — Core Values (Behavioral)

    Behavioral · 30-60 minutes · difficulty 2/5

    Mode of interview: Live behavioral interview

  7. Round 6: Team Match & Offer

    Offer · ~1-2 weeks

    Mode of interview: Offer discussion

Senior Software Engineer (G9, India)

Difficulty: Hard · Timeline: ~3-5 week · Recommended prep: 8-12 weeks · Cooldown: ~6-12 month

  1. Round 0: Recruiter Screen

    Phone · 30-45 minutes · difficulty 1/5 · elimination round

    Mode of interview: Remote phone or video interview

  2. Round 1: Technical Screen / Online Assessment

    Assessment · 45-60 min · difficulty 3/5 · elimination round

    Mode of interview: Online assessment

    Sample question: Text Justification — Given an array of words and a maxWidth, format the text so each line has exactly maxWidth characters and is fully (left and right) justified. Pack as many words per line as fit; distribute extra spaces evenly between words with the left gaps getting more space when it doesn't divide evenly. The last line (and any line with a single word) is left-justified with no extra spaces between words and padded on the right.

  3. Round 2: Onsite Loop (Coding, Code Review, System Design, Experience Deep Dive, Core Values)

    Onsite · 45-60 min · difficulty 4/5

    Mode of interview: Onsite or virtual onsite interview

    Sample question: Design Airbnb booking / reservation system — Design Airbnb's booking and reservation system. Support searching listings by location/dates/guests, holding and confirming a reservation, cancellation, and payment. The hard requirement: two users must never book the same listing for overlapping dates (no double booking) under high concurrency. Discuss the availability/inventory model, how you enforce strong consistency (DB transactions / conditional writes / unique date-range constraints, soft-hold with timeout, idempotency keys), how booking+payment stay atomic (e.g. Saga), and where eventual consistency (search index) is acceptable.

  4. Round 3: Team Match & Offer

    Offer · ~1-2 weeks

    Mode of interview: Offer discussion

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