Expedia interview process (2026)
Round-by-round breakdown of the Expedia software engineering interview across 4 levels and 19 rounds: what each round covers, what interviewers evaluate, sample questions, and preparation tips.
SDE Intern (on-campus)
Difficulty: Medium · Timeline: ~1-2 weeks (campus drive) · Recommended prep: 4-6 weeks · Cooldown: Next campus season
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Round 0: Strength / psychometric assessment
Assessment · ~45 min · difficulty 1/5 · elimination round
Focus: Behavioral scenarios, work-style preferences, Expedia Group values
Campus drives at IITs/NITs and other tier-1 colleges start with a 45-minute scenario-based strength assessment on a capability platform. In one reported drive roughly 200+ applicants were cut to ~96 at this stage, so it is a genuine filter, not a formality.
What they evaluate: Consistency of answers, collaboration and ownership signals, alignment with Expedia Group values (relentlessly strive for better, force simplicity).
Tips: Answer honestly but consistently - the platform flags contradictory answers across similar scenarios. Skim Expedia Group values beforehand.
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Round 1: HackerRank coding assessment
Assessment · ~60 min · difficulty 2/5 · elimination round
Focus: Arrays, strings, priority queues, hashing
One-hour HackerRank test with 2 coding questions. Reported drives had one array/string question and one priority-queue question; hidden test cases, so edge cases and I/O correctness matter. Roughly 20 of ~96 candidates cleared this in one Sept campus drive.
What they evaluate: Correct, fully-passing solutions within the hour; clean handling of edge cases; sensible complexity (heap over repeated sorting).
Sample question: You are given N hotel room prices and an integer k. Return the k cheapest prices in ascending order without fully sorting the array (use a max-heap of size k, O(N log k)).
Tips: Practice priority-queue and sliding-window patterns on HackerRank itself - its I/O harness trips up people used only to LeetCode.
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Round 2: Technical interview - DSA + projects
Onsite · ~45 min · difficulty 2/5 · elimination round
Focus: Linked lists, trees, recursion, projects, why travel-tech
Same-day interview on campus (or Zoom). Starts with introduction and a deep walk through one resume project, then 1-2 DSA problems solved on paper or a shared editor, discussing brute force before the optimal approach. Interviewers also ask why you want to work in travel tech.
What they evaluate: Thought process out loud, ability to move from brute force to optimal, honest depth on your own projects.
Sample question: Detect whether a singly linked list has a cycle and return the node where the cycle begins (Floyd cycle detection, O(1) extra space).
Tips: Interviewers repeatedly reward narrated reasoning over silent coding - state the brute force, its complexity, then improve it.
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Round 3: Technical + HR interview
Behavioral · ~45 min · difficulty 2/5
Focus: Advanced DSA follow-up, teamwork, conflict scenarios, Expedia values
Final same-day round mixing a harder DSA or algorithm-design question with HR questions: teamwork conflicts, handling deadlines, and interest in Expedia Group (Gurgaon and Bengaluru offices). Offers are typically announced within a few days of the drive.
What they evaluate: Composure under a harder problem, culture fit, genuine interest in the internship and conversion to SDE I.
Tips: Prepare 2-3 STAR stories (conflict, deadline, learning fast). Conversion to full-time depends heavily on internship performance, so ask about the conversion process.
SDE I (entry / new grad)
Difficulty: Medium · Timeline: ~2-4 weeks · Recommended prep: 6-8 weeks · Cooldown: ~6 months
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Round 0: Recruiter screen
Phone · ~20-30 min
Focus: Resume walkthrough, notice period, location (Gurgaon / Bengaluru), process overview
Short call from Expedia Group India TA. Covers your background, current CTC and notice period, preferred office (Gurgaon is the larger India engineering hub; Bengaluru also hires), and explains the round structure. A July 2025 Gurgaon SDE I report describes a screening call followed by three interviews.
What they evaluate: Basic fit, communication, availability; not a technical filter.
Tips: Ask which team the requisition is for - Expedia hires per-team, and the recruiter can share the tech stack (Java/Kotlin/Spring on most India teams).
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Round 1: HackerRank online assessment
Assessment · ~60-90 min · difficulty 2/5 · elimination round
Focus: Arrays, strings, heaps, hashing, greedy
HackerRank OA with 2 questions (campus: 60 min) or 3 questions (off-campus: 90 min) at LeetCode easy-medium level. Reported topics: arrays/strings, priority queues, hashing. Hidden test cases - partial scores rarely clear the bar.
What they evaluate: All test cases passing, time-complexity awareness, clean code under time pressure.
Sample question: You are given N luggage bundles with weights w1..wN. Merging two bundles costs the sum of their weights. Find the minimum total cost to merge everything into one bundle. Input: N, then N weights. Output: minimum cost. (Classic min-heap greedy, O(N log N).)
Tips: Solve on HackerRank specifically - reading stdin and printing exact output formats is half the battle. Target 30+ LC mediums across arrays, heaps and strings.
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Round 2: DSA interview 1
Onsite · ~45-60 min · difficulty 3/5 · elimination round
Focus: Strings, binary trees, dynamic programming basics
First technical interview (Zoom + HackerRank CodePair). Reported questions: longest palindromic substring, diameter of a binary tree, longest substring problems. You are expected to state the brute force, improve it, then write working code that passes visible tests.
What they evaluate: Structured problem solving, correct working code, complexity analysis for both time and space.
Sample question: Given a string s (length up to 2000), return the longest palindromic substring. Discuss the O(n^2) expand-around-center approach and why it beats the naive O(n^3).
Tips: Expedia interviewers explicitly reward the brute-force-first narrative - do not jump straight to the optimal solution without framing it.
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Round 3: DSA interview 2
Onsite · ~45-60 min · difficulty 3/5 · elimination round
Focus: Linked lists, tree traversals, prefix sums, light CS fundamentals
Second technical, often with an SDE III. Reported sets include 2-3 problems in one sitting: subarray-sum variants, cloning a linked list with random pointers, diagonal tree traversal, plus quick questions on sorting complexities and HashMap internals. Some loops also mix in situational questions here.
What they evaluate: Speed and accuracy across multiple problems, pointer manipulation, fundamentals (sorting complexities, hashing).
Sample question: Clone a singly linked list where each node has an extra random pointer to an arbitrary node (or NULL), in O(n) time. Discuss both the HashMap approach and the O(1)-extra-space interleaving trick.
Tips: Practice writing linked-list code without a debugger - this round is paper/editor coding and off-by-one pointer bugs are the main killer.
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Round 4: Hiring manager + values round
Behavioral · ~45 min · difficulty 1/5
Focus: Expedia Group values, teamwork, situational questions, team fit
Closing round with the hiring manager. India reports describe it as tech-plus-HR with heavy emphasis on values and situational questions: conflicts in a team, missed deadlines, why Expedia. Light technical discussion of your projects may continue here.
What they evaluate: Alignment with Expedia Group values, ownership, clear communication; manager veto applies.
Tips: Read the official Expedia Group interview guide and weave their values vocabulary into your STAR answers - multiple reports say this is explicitly checked.
SDE II
Difficulty: Medium · Timeline: ~4-8 weeks · Recommended prep: 8-10 weeks · Cooldown: ~6 months
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Round 0: HackerRank OA - 3 questions, 90 min
Assessment · 90 min · difficulty 3/5 · elimination round
Focus: Strings, dynamic programming, matrices / 2D arrays
The SDE II funnel starts with a 90-minute HackerRank test: 3 LeetCode-medium questions, with strings, DP and matrix/2D-array problems reported by a 3-YOE candidate. The OA can come 15-20 days after applying, and interviews may be scheduled weeks later - often bundled into a single-day virtual drive.
What they evaluate: Three fully-passing solutions in 90 minutes; complexity awareness and clean code are explicitly called out by past candidates.
Sample question: Given an m x n grid where some cells are blocked, count the number of distinct paths from the top-left to the bottom-right moving only right or down, modulo 1e9+7. (DP over the matrix, O(mn).)
Tips: Do timed 3-question HackerRank mocks - pacing (30 min per question) fails more people than difficulty. Brush up DP on grids and string DP.
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Round 1: DSA + coding round 1
Onsite · ~60 min · difficulty 3/5 · elimination round
Focus: Sliding window, hashing, LRU cache, linked list + HashMap design
Live coding on HackerRank CodePair. A reported pair: longest substring without repeating characters (expected O(n)) followed by implementing an LRU cache with HashMap + doubly linked list. Solutions are run against hidden tests, and interviewers probe why your approach matches the optimal complexity.
What they evaluate: Optimal sliding-window/hashing solutions, ability to design a small data structure (LRU) with clean APIs, working code not pseudocode.
Sample question: Given a string s, find the length of the longest substring without repeating characters in O(n). Input: one line containing s. Output: the length.
Tips: LRU cache shows up repeatedly at Expedia - be able to write it bug-free in under 20 minutes, including eviction on capacity.
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Round 2: DSA + coding round 2
Onsite · ~50-60 min · difficulty 3/5 · elimination round
Focus: Linked lists, tree traversals, binary search on rotated arrays, SQL
Second coding round, similar format. Reported questions: remove duplicates from an unsorted linked list, zigzag (spiral) level-order traversal of a binary tree, modified binary search on a rotated sorted array - plus a bonus SQL question (find the 4th highest salary). Strong candidates finish early and chat with the interviewer.
What they evaluate: Breadth across core DSA patterns, correct stack/queue mechanics for traversals, basic SQL fluency (window functions or LIMIT/OFFSET).
Sample question: Print the zigzag level-order traversal of a binary tree: level 0 left-to-right, level 1 right-to-left, alternating. Follow-up SQL: return the 4th highest distinct salary from an Employee table.
Tips: Do not skip the SQL warm-up: DENSE_RANK() or ORDER BY DESC LIMIT 1 OFFSET 3 - candidates report it as a real differentiator.
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Round 3: System design - HLD + LLD combined
System_design · ~90 min · difficulty 4/5 · elimination round
Focus: HLD (booking/delivery systems), LLD (API + class design), concurrency, scalability
Signature Expedia SDE II round, often ~90 minutes covering both altitudes: an HLD problem (hotel booking system with search, availability and booking under concurrency; flight booking; grocery delivery app were all reported) for ~40-50 min, then an LLD exercise (invoice generation service with model classes; an API to decide 2-day deliverability for a pincode) for ~20-30 min.
What they evaluate: Requirement scoping (functional + non-functional), API design, handling double-booking/concurrency with locks or idempotency, clean class modeling in the LLD half.
Sample question: Design a hotel booking system: search hotels by city and dates, check room availability, and book without double-booking under concurrent requests. Cover APIs, data model, caching for search, and how you serialize conflicting bookings.
Tips: Practice travel-domain designs specifically (hotel/flight booking) - Expedia interviewers steer toward their own domain and dig into inventory concurrency.
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Round 4: Hiring manager / values round
Behavioral · ~45 min · difficulty 2/5
Focus: Expedia Group values, hypothetical scenarios, ethics, teamwork
Final round with the hiring manager. Described by candidates as a cultural-fit conversation: the manager shares Expedia Group values and checks that your answers to hypothetical scenarios (work ethics, conflicting priorities, teamwork) align. Offers have been reported within a week of clearing this round; overall SDE II pass rate is selective (~33% per Taro).
What they evaluate: Values alignment, maturity for a mid-level role, ownership stories with measurable outcomes.
Tips: Prepare 4-5 STAR stories mapped to Expedia values; be specific about YOUR contribution and metrics, not team outcomes.
SDE III (senior)
Difficulty: Hard · Timeline: ~3-6 weeks · Recommended prep: 8-12 weeks · Cooldown: ~6 months
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Round 0: Recruiter screen
Phone · ~30 min
Focus: Seniority calibration, team/charter, process walkthrough
Recruiter call that explains the SDE III loop: after an initial coding round, the remaining rounds are typically stacked into a single day of 45-minute sessions with 15-minute breaks (per a Gurgaon SDE III write-up). Final loop dates are sometimes confirmed only 1-2 days in advance.
What they evaluate: Level fit (5+ YOE typical), team match, logistics.
Tips: Block a full day for the loop and ask for the interviewer lineup in advance so you know which session is design vs coding.
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Round 1: Coding round 1 (HackerRank CodePair)
Onsite · ~45 min · difficulty 3/5 · elimination round
Focus: Intervals, heaps, greedy, arrays
First technical, run by an SDE III on HackerRank: 5-10 min intros, one main coding problem, 5 min Q&A. A reported problem is the minimum-parking-slots interval question (how many cars are simultaneously parked). Working code plus complexity discussion is expected inside 30 minutes.
What they evaluate: Fast, correct interval/heap reasoning at senior speed; production-quality naming and edge cases even under time pressure.
Sample question: Cars arrive and depart at given times. Given N arrival times and N departure times, find the minimum number of parking slots so no car waits. Input: N, then N arrivals, then N departures. Output: minimum slots. (Sort both, two pointers, O(N log N).)
Tips: Senior loops still gate hard on this round - clearing it triggers the full-day loop. Keep LC-medium speed sharp even with 8+ YOE.
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Round 2: Coding round 2
Onsite · ~45 min · difficulty 4/5 · elimination round
Focus: K-way merge, heaps, harder DSA, code quality
Second DSA round in the loop day (the Feb 2024 Gurgaon report describes two DSA rounds before design). Difficulty is LC medium to medium-hard with follow-ups on streaming/scale variants. Expect discussion of trade-offs, not just a passing solution.
What they evaluate: Depth beyond the first solution: streaming variants, memory limits, and how the code would look in production (interfaces, tests).
Sample question: You have K sorted streams of hotel price updates. Merge them into one sorted output stream using O(K) memory. Follow-up: what changes if one stream lags (out-of-order tolerance with a bounded buffer)?
Tips: Rehearse the follow-up game: after solving, proactively discuss what breaks at 10x scale - senior loops score initiative here.
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Round 3: System design (HLD)
System_design · ~60 min · difficulty 5/5 · elimination round
Focus: Large-scale HLD, schema design, messaging, encryption, travel-domain systems
The decisive SDE III round. Reported prompts include designing a WhatsApp-style group messaging system (message fan-out, schema for storing messages, retry mechanisms, end-to-end encryption) and travel-domain systems like flight search/booking. You drive the whiteboard end to end: requirements, capacity, APIs, data model, failure modes.
What they evaluate: Senior-level ownership of the design: justified trade-offs (SQL vs NoSQL, push vs pull), back-of-envelope capacity math, deep-dive resilience (retries, idempotency, ordering).
Sample question: Design group messaging for a WhatsApp-scale app: message delivery to online/offline members, database schema for messages and group membership, retry and ordering guarantees, and where end-to-end encryption fits.
Tips: Practice one messaging design and one booking design to depth - Expedia SDE III design goes 60 full minutes on a single prompt with aggressive follow-ups.
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Round 4: Hiring manager - leadership + values
Behavioral · ~45-60 min · difficulty 2/5
Focus: Project deep-dives, innovation, mentorship, Expedia Group values
Engineering-manager round: deep exploration of recent projects, the innovations and hardest challenges in them, how you mentor and influence without authority, plus values-based situational questions. Some loops add light design-principles discussion here.
What they evaluate: Scope and impact worthy of SDE III, technical judgment in past decisions, leadership and mentorship evidence, values alignment.
Tips: Bring one project you can defend for 30 minutes: architecture, alternatives you rejected and why, measured impact, and what you would redo.
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.