Expedia interview process (2026)
Round-by-round breakdown of the Expedia software engineering interview across 4 levels and 19 rounds: interview mode, sample questions, and worked solutions.
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
Mode of interview: Online assessment
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Round 1: HackerRank coding assessment
Assessment · ~60 min · difficulty 2/5 · elimination round
Mode of interview: Online assessment · HackerRank
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)).
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Round 2: Technical interview - DSA + projects
Onsite · ~45 min · difficulty 2/5 · elimination round
Mode of interview: Onsite or virtual onsite interview
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).
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Round 3: Technical + HR interview
Behavioral · ~45 min · difficulty 2/5
Mode of interview: Live behavioral interview
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
Mode of interview: Remote phone or video interview
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Round 1: HackerRank online assessment
Assessment · ~60-90 min · difficulty 2/5 · elimination round
Mode of interview: Online assessment · HackerRank
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).)
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Round 2: DSA interview 1
Onsite · ~45-60 min · difficulty 3/5 · elimination round
Mode of interview: Live interview · HackerRank CodePair
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).
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Round 3: DSA interview 2
Onsite · ~45-60 min · difficulty 3/5 · elimination round
Mode of interview: Onsite or virtual onsite interview
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.
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Round 4: Hiring manager + values round
Behavioral · ~45 min · difficulty 1/5
Mode of interview: Live behavioral interview
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
Mode of interview: Online assessment · HackerRank
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).)
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Round 1: DSA + coding round 1
Onsite · ~60 min · difficulty 3/5 · elimination round
Mode of interview: Live interview · HackerRank CodePair
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.
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Round 2: DSA + coding round 2
Onsite · ~50-60 min · difficulty 3/5 · elimination round
Mode of interview: Onsite or virtual onsite interview
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.
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Round 3: System design - HLD + LLD combined
System_design · ~90 min · difficulty 4/5 · elimination round
Mode of interview: Live system design interview
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.
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Round 4: Hiring manager / values round
Behavioral · ~45 min · difficulty 2/5
Mode of interview: Live behavioral interview
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
Mode of interview: Remote phone or video interview
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Round 1: Coding round 1 (HackerRank CodePair)
Onsite · ~45 min · difficulty 3/5 · elimination round
Mode of interview: Onsite or virtual onsite interview
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).)
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Round 2: Coding round 2
Onsite · ~45 min · difficulty 4/5 · elimination round
Mode of interview: Onsite or virtual onsite interview
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)?
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Round 3: System design (HLD)
System_design · ~60 min · difficulty 5/5 · elimination round
Mode of interview: Live system design interview
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.
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Round 4: Hiring manager - leadership + values
Behavioral · ~45-60 min · difficulty 2/5
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.