Apple interview process (2026)

Round-by-round breakdown of the Apple software engineering interview across 4 levels and 24 rounds: interview mode, sample questions, and worked solutions.

Apple salary & ratings · All interview processes

Software Engineering Intern (6-month, on-campus SDE Intern)

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

  1. Round 0: Online Assessment (proctored)

    Assessment · ~60 minutes · difficulty 2/5 · elimination round

    Mode of interview: Online assessment

    Sample question: Group Anagrams — Given an array of strings, group the anagrams together (words that are rearrangements of the same letters belong to the same group). Return the groups in any order.

  2. Round 1: Technical / Coding Interview (live, eliminatory)

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

    Mode of interview: Onsite or virtual onsite interview

    Sample question: Search in Rotated Sorted Array — Given a sorted array of distinct integers that has been rotated at an unknown pivot, and a target value, return the index of the target or -1 if it is not present. Must run in O(log n) time.

  3. Round 2: Techno-Managerial / Project + HR Round

    Behavioral · ~45 minutes · difficulty 2/5

    Mode of interview: Live behavioral interview

Software Engineer / Senior (ICT2-ICT3)

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

  1. Round 0: Recruiter Screen

    Other · 15-30 min · difficulty 1/5 · elimination round

    Mode of interview: Interview format varies by team

    Sample question: Why do you want to work at Apple, and why this team specifically?

  2. Round 1: Technical Phone Screen

    Phone · 30-60 min · difficulty 2/5 · elimination round

    Mode of interview: Remote phone or video interview

    Sample question: Product of Array Except Self — Given an integer array nums, return an array answer such that answer[i] equals the product of all elements of nums except nums[i]. Solve in O(n) time and without using the division operation.

  3. Round 2: Onsite Loop — Coding (primary)

    Onsite · 45-60 min · difficulty 3/5

    Mode of interview: Onsite or virtual onsite interview

    Sample question: Group Anagrams — Given an array of strings, group the anagrams together. Two strings are anagrams if one is a rearrangement of the other's letters. Return the groups in any order.

  4. Round 3: Onsite Loop — Coding (second)

    Onsite · 45-60 min · difficulty 3/5

    Mode of interview: Onsite or virtual onsite interview

    Sample question: Number of Islands — Given an m x n grid of '1' (land) and '0' (water), count the number of islands. An island is a maximal group of land cells connected 4-directionally (up/down/left/right).

  5. Round 4: Onsite Loop — System / Design

    System_design · 45-60 min · difficulty 3/5

    Mode of interview: Live system design interview

    Sample question: Design a URL Shortening Service (bit.ly / TinyURL) — Design a URL shortener: generate a short code for a long URL, redirect from short to long, handle collisions and custom aliases, and scale reads far above writes. Discuss key generation (counter/base62 vs hashing), storage/DB choice, caching, and analytics.

  6. Round 5: Onsite Loop — Behavioral

    Behavioral · 45-60 min · difficulty 2/5

    Mode of interview: Live behavioral interview

    Sample question: Why Apple? Tell me about a time you handled ambiguity with little direction.

  7. Round 6: Onsite Loop — Domain / Team-Match & Decision

    Onsite · 45-60 min · difficulty 3/5

    Mode of interview: Onsite or virtual onsite interview

Senior Software Engineer (ICT4)

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

  1. Round 0: Recruiter / Hiring-Manager Screen

    Other · 30-45 min · difficulty 2/5 · elimination round

    Mode of interview: Interview format varies by team

  2. Round 1: Technical Phone Screen(s)

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

    Mode of interview: Remote phone or video interview

    Sample question: Trapping Rain Water — Given n non-negative integers representing an elevation map where each bar has width 1, compute how much rainwater can be trapped after raining. Aim for O(n) time and O(1) extra space.

  3. Round 2: Onsite Loop — Coding

    Onsite · 60 min · difficulty 3/5

    Mode of interview: Onsite or virtual onsite interview

    Sample question: Median of Two Sorted Arrays — Given two sorted arrays nums1 and nums2 of sizes m and n, return the median of the combined sorted array. The optimal solution runs in O(log(min(m,n))). (This reference solution merges for clarity and correctness.)

  4. Round 3: Onsite Loop — System Design

    System_design · 45-60 min · difficulty 4/5

    Mode of interview: Live system design interview

    Sample question: Design iMessage (multi-device, end-to-end encrypted delivery) — Design iMessage message routing: deliver messages across a user's iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Watch (same Apple ID) so they appear on every device, stay ordered, and remain readable after a device was offline. The server acts as a courier for encrypted payloads and must not be able to read message text or attachments. Cover device registration/keys, fan-out to per-device queues, ordering, offline delivery, and the E2E threat model.

  5. Round 4: Onsite Loop — Coding + Design / Technical Background

    Onsite · 60 min · difficulty 4/5

    Mode of interview: Onsite or virtual onsite interview

    Sample question: Word Ladder — Given beginWord, endWord, and a wordList, return the number of words in the shortest transformation sequence from beginWord to endWord where each step changes exactly one letter and every intermediate word is in wordList. Return 0 if no such sequence exists.

  6. Round 5: Onsite Loop — Behavioral (1)

    Behavioral · 45-60 min · difficulty 3/5

    Mode of interview: Live behavioral interview

    Sample question: Tell me about a time you handled ambiguity or drove a project with little direction.

  7. Round 6: Onsite Loop — Behavioral (2) / Hiring Manager + Team Match & Decision

    Behavioral · 45-60 min · difficulty 3/5

    Mode of interview: Live behavioral interview

Staff Software Engineer (ICT5)

Difficulty: Hard · Timeline: 4-8 weeks · Recommended prep: 10-14 weeks · Cooldown: ~6-12 month

  1. Round 0: Recruiter Screen

    Other · 30 min · difficulty 2/5 · elimination round

    Mode of interview: Interview format varies by team

  2. Round 1: Technical Phone Screen(s)

    Phone · 30-60 min · difficulty 3/5 · elimination round

    Mode of interview: Remote phone or video interview

    Sample question: Maximum Profit in Job Scheduling — Given n jobs each with startTime[i], endTime[i], and profit[i], select a subset of non-overlapping jobs (a job ending at time t is compatible with one starting at t) to maximize total profit. Return the maximum profit.

  3. Round 2: Onsite Loop — Coding

    Onsite · 60 min · difficulty 3/5

    Mode of interview: Onsite or virtual onsite interview

    Sample question: LRU Cache (thread-safe / eviction-policy variant) — Design an LRU cache supporting get(key) and put(key, value) in O(1) average time, evicting the least-recently-used entry when capacity is exceeded. Staff follow-ups: make it thread-safe under concurrent access, and discuss extending to LFU or TTL eviction.

  4. Round 3: Onsite Loop — System Design (1)

    System_design · 60 min · difficulty 4/5

    Mode of interview: Live system design interview

    Sample question: Design Apple Notes Sync (offline-first, multi-device conflict resolution) — Design Notes sync across a user's devices: store notes locally with edits tracked as an append-only operation log, sync in the background under tight OS scheduling/battery limits, support offline-first editing with no data loss, and merge concurrent edits from multiple devices (operation streams / CRDT-style conflict resolution). Discuss the sync engine, conflict model, and consistency/latency trade-offs.

  5. Round 4: Onsite Loop — System Design (2) / Architecture Strategy

    System_design · 45-60 min · difficulty 4/5

    Mode of interview: Live system design interview

    Sample question: Design the App Store — Design Apple's App Store backend: app submission/review pipeline, app discovery and catalog search with facets, purchases and entitlements, ratings/reviews, and a ranking/recommendation surface, all serving hundreds of millions of devices. Cover metadata storage, read-heavy catalog serving via CDN/caching, review-fraud handling, and global availability/consistency trade-offs.

  6. Round 5: Onsite Loop — Behavioral / Leadership

    Behavioral · 45-60 min · difficulty 3/5

    Mode of interview: Live behavioral interview

  7. Round 6: Onsite Loop — Hiring Manager + Skip-Level & Decision

    Other · 30-45 min · difficulty 3/5

    Mode of interview: Interview format varies by team

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.