Goldman Sachs interview process (2026)

Round-by-round breakdown of the Goldman Sachs software engineering interview across 4 levels and 21 rounds: interview mode, sample questions, and worked solutions.

Goldman Sachs salary & ratings · All interview processes

Summer Analyst - Engineering (SDE Intern)

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

  1. Round 0: Aptitude / Cognitive Online Assessment

    Assessment · Timed; ~66-70 objective questions plus 2 subjective question · difficulty 2/5 · elimination round

    Mode of interview: Online assessment

    Sample question: Fraction to Recurring Decimal — Given two integers numerator and denominator, return the fraction as a string. If the fractional part repeats, enclose the repeating part in parentheses, e.g. 4/333 -> "0.(012)". Handle negative signs and non-repeating terminating decimals.

  2. Round 1: Coding + CS Fundamentals Online Assessment (HackerRank)

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

    Mode of interview: Online assessment · HackerRank

    Sample question: LRU Cache — Design a data structure supporting get(key) and put(key, value) in O(1) average time, with a fixed capacity. When capacity is exceeded, evict the least-recently-used key. get and put both count as a use.

  3. Round 2: HireVue Video Interview (track/division dependent - NOT confirmed for the SWE intern loop)

    Phone · ~30 minutes · difficulty 1/5

    Mode of interview: Remote phone or video interview

  4. Round 3: Technical Interview 1

    Onsite · ~45 min · difficulty 2/5

    Mode of interview: Onsite or virtual onsite interview

    Sample question: First Unique Character in a String — Given a string s, return the index of the first non-repeating character. If there is no such character, return -1.

  5. Round 4: Technical Interview 2 (DSA + CS fundamentals + projects)

    Onsite · ~45-60 min · difficulty 2/5

    Mode of interview: Onsite or virtual onsite interview

    Sample question: Group Anagrams — Given an array of strings, group the strings that are anagrams of each other. Return the groups (order within/among groups does not matter).

  6. Round 5: HR / Behavioral Round

    Behavioral · ~30 min · difficulty 1/5

    Mode of interview: Live behavioral interview

Analyst (New Grad / SDE-1) — Engineering, Bengaluru/Hyderabad

Difficulty: Medium · Timeline: 4-8 weeks · Recommended prep: 6-10 weeks · Cooldown: ~6-12 months

  1. Round 0: HackerRank Online Assessment

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

    Mode of interview: Online assessment

    Sample question: First Unique Character in a String — Given a string, return the index of the first non-repeating character. If every character repeats, return -1.

  2. Round 1: CoderPad Technical Phone Screen

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

    Mode of interview: Remote phone or video interview

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

  3. Round 2: Superday — Technical Round 1 (DSA)

    Onsite · 45 minutes · difficulty 3/5

    Mode of interview: Onsite or virtual onsite interview

    Sample question: Search in Rotated Sorted Array — Given an ascending array rotated at an unknown pivot (distinct values) and a target, return its index in O(log n), or -1 if absent.

  4. Round 3: Superday — Technical Round 2 (Coding + CS fundamentals / light design)

    Onsite · 45 minutes · difficulty 3/5

    Mode of interview: Onsite or virtual onsite interview

    Sample question: Decode Ways — A message of digits is encoded with 'A'->1 ... 'Z'->26. Given a digit string, return the number of ways to decode it (0 if the string cannot be decoded).

  5. Round 4: Superday — Behavioral / HR (Managerial fit)

    Behavioral · 30-60 minutes · difficulty 1/5

    Mode of interview: Live behavioral interview

Associate (Mid / SDE-2) — Engineering, Bengaluru/Hyderabad

Difficulty: Hard · Timeline: ~4-8 weeks · Recommended prep: 8-12 weeks · Cooldown: ~6-12 months

  1. Round 0: HackerRank Online Assessment

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

    Mode of interview: Online assessment

    Sample question: Trapping Rain Water — Given n non-negative bar heights (each width 1), compute how much water is trapped after raining.

  2. Round 1: CoderPad DSA Technical Round

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

    Mode of interview: Remote phone or video interview

    Sample question: Median of Two Sorted Arrays — Given two sorted arrays of sizes m and n, return the median of the combined sorted array.

  3. Round 2: Superday — DSA Round

    Onsite · 45-60 minutes · difficulty 3/5

    Mode of interview: Onsite or virtual onsite interview

    Sample question: First Missing Positive — Given an unsorted integer array, find the smallest missing positive integer in O(n) time and O(1) extra space.

  4. Round 3: Superday — System Design (HLD) + Engineering Practices

    System_design · 45-60 minutes · difficulty 3/5

    Mode of interview: Live system design interview

    Sample question: Design an e-commerce platform (cart, orders, payments) — LLD + HLD — Design the low-level and high-level architecture of an e-commerce platform covering the shopping cart, order lifecycle, and multiple payment methods. Discuss data models, service boundaries, database indexing, SQL vs NoSQL trade-offs, and how you keep orders/payments consistent.

  5. Round 4: Superday — Concurrency + LLD + Databases

    System_design · 45-60 minutes · difficulty 4/5

    Mode of interview: Live system design interview

    Sample question: Design a version-control system (Design Git) — Design a version-control system like Git: object model (blobs/trees/commits), branching and merge strategy, how history is stored and diffed, and how you would scale hosting/collaboration.

  6. Round 5: Behavioral / Hiring-Manager Round

    Behavioral · 30-60 minutes · difficulty 1/5

    Mode of interview: Live behavioral interview

Vice President (Senior) — Engineering, Bengaluru/Hyderabad

Difficulty: Hard · Timeline: ~4-8 weeks · Recommended prep: System design (HLD + LLD) at scale, conc · Cooldown: No official policy.

  1. Round 0: Recruiter / Hiring-Manager Screen

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

    Mode of interview: Remote phone or video interview

  2. Round 1: CoderPad Technical Round

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

    Mode of interview: Remote phone or video interview

    Sample question: Find Median from Data Stream — Design a data structure that supports addNum(x) to ingest a stream of integers and findMedian() to return the median of all elements so far, both efficiently (two-heap design).

  3. Round 2: Superday — System Design (HLD/LLD at scale)

    System_design · 45-60 minutes · difficulty 4/5

    Mode of interview: Live system design interview

    Sample question: Design a real-time trading / order-matching engine — Design a real-time trading platform with an in-memory order-matching engine: order entry and validation, price-time priority matching, sub-millisecond latency, concurrency control for thousands of trades/sec, strict ordering integrity per instrument, and fault tolerance so no trade is lost on failure.

  4. Round 3: Superday — Leadership / Behavioral (Senior panel)

    Behavioral · 45-60 minutes · 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.