Google interview process (2026)

Round-by-round breakdown of the Google software engineering interview across 4 levels and 32 rounds: interview mode, sample questions, and worked solutions.

Google salary & ratings · All interview processes

Software Engineering Intern

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

  1. Round 0: Application / Recruiter Screen

    Phone · ~20-30 min · difficulty 1/5 · elimination round

    Mode of interview: Remote phone or video interview

  2. Round 1: Online Assessment (coding OA / GHA)

    Assessment · ~30-90 min · difficulty 2/5 · elimination round

    Mode of interview: Online assessment

    Sample question: Product of Array Except Self — Given an integer array nums, return an array output where output[i] is the product of all elements of nums except nums[i]. Solve without division and in O(n) time.

  3. Round 2: Technical Interview 1 (virtual coding)

    Phone · ~45 min · difficulty 2/5

    Mode of interview: Remote phone or video interview

    Sample question: Two Sum — Given an integer array nums and an integer target, return the indices of the two numbers that add up to target. Exactly one solution exists; each element may be used once.

  4. Round 3: Technical Interview 2 (virtual coding)

    Phone · ~45 min · difficulty 3/5

    Mode of interview: Remote phone or video interview

    Sample question: Longest Substring Without Repeating Characters — Given a string s, return the length of the longest substring that contains no repeating characters.

  5. Round 4: Host / Team Matching

    Offer · Variable — days to several weeks · difficulty 1/5

    Mode of interview: Offer discussion

Software Engineer, L3 (New Grad / Entry-Level)

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

  1. Round 0: Recruiter Screen

    Phone · ~30 min · difficulty 1/5 · elimination round

    Mode of interview: Remote phone or video interview

  2. Round 1: Google Hiring Assessment (GHA)

    Assessment · ~30-45 min · difficulty 1/5 · elimination round

    Mode of interview: Online assessment

  3. Round 2: Technical Phone Screen (coding)

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

    Mode of interview: Remote phone or video interview

    Sample question: Number of Islands — Given an m x n 2D grid of '1' (land) and '0' (water), count the number of islands. An island is formed by connecting adjacent lands horizontally or vertically.

  4. Round 3: Onsite Coding Round 1

    Onsite · 45 min · difficulty 3/5

    Mode of interview: Onsite or virtual onsite interview

    Sample question: Lowest Common Ancestor of a Binary Tree — Given the root of a binary tree and two node values p and q, return the value of their lowest common ancestor (the deepest node that has both p and q as descendants).

  5. Round 4: Onsite Coding Round 2

    Onsite · 45 min · difficulty 3/5

    Mode of interview: Onsite or virtual onsite interview

    Sample question: Validate Binary Search Tree — Given the root of a binary tree, determine whether it is a valid binary search tree (every node's left subtree < node < right subtree, strictly).

  6. Round 5: Onsite Coding Round 3

    Onsite · 45 min · difficulty 3/5

    Mode of interview: Onsite or virtual onsite interview

    Sample question: Word Break — Given a string s and a dictionary of words, return true if s can be segmented into a space-separated sequence of one or more dictionary words.

  7. Round 6: Googleyness & Leadership (Behavioral)

    Behavioral · 45 min · difficulty 2/5

    Mode of interview: Live behavioral interview

  8. Round 7: Hiring Committee Review

    Other · ~1-2 weeks · difficulty 2/5

    Mode of interview: Interview format varies by team

  9. Round 8: Team Matching & Offer

    Offer · Days to weeks · difficulty 1/5

    Mode of interview: Offer discussion

Software Engineer, L4 (Mid-Level)

Difficulty: Hard · Timeline: ~2 months · Recommended prep: 8-12 weeks · Cooldown: ~12-month

  1. Round 0: Recruiter Phone Screen

    Phone · ~30 min · difficulty 1/5 · elimination round

    Mode of interview: Remote phone or video interview

  2. Round 1: Google Hiring Assessment (GHA)

    Assessment · ~30-45 min · difficulty 1/5 · elimination round

    Mode of interview: Online assessment

  3. Round 2: Technical Phone Screen (coding)

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

    Mode of interview: Remote phone or video interview

    Sample question: Minimum Window Substring — Given strings s and t, return the minimum-length substring of s that contains every character of t (including multiplicity). Return an empty string if none exists.

  4. Round 3: Onsite Coding Round 1

    Onsite · 45 min · difficulty 4/5

    Mode of interview: Onsite or virtual onsite interview

    Sample question: Word Ladder — Given beginWord, endWord, and a word list, return the number of words in the shortest transformation sequence from beginWord to endWord, changing one letter at a time with every intermediate word in the list (0 if impossible).

  5. Round 4: Onsite Coding Round 2

    Onsite · 45 min · difficulty 4/5

    Mode of interview: Onsite or virtual onsite interview

    Sample question: Trapping Rain Water — Given n non-negative integers representing an elevation map where each bar has width 1, compute how much water it can trap after raining.

  6. Round 5: Onsite Coding Round 3 (may vary)

    Onsite · 45 min · difficulty 4/5

    Mode of interview: Onsite or virtual onsite interview

    Sample question: Serialize and Deserialize Binary Tree — Design an algorithm to serialize a binary tree to a string and deserialize that string back to the identical tree structure. Implement both codec directions.

  7. Round 6: Googleyness & Leadership (Behavioral)

    Behavioral · 45 min · difficulty 2/5

    Mode of interview: Live behavioral interview

  8. Round 7: Hiring Committee Review

    Other · ~1-2 weeks · difficulty 3/5

    Mode of interview: Interview format varies by team

  9. Round 8: Team Matching & Offer

    Offer · Days to weeks · difficulty 1/5

    Mode of interview: Offer discussion

Software Engineer, L5 (Senior)

Difficulty: Hard · Timeline: ~6-10 weeks · Recommended prep: ~5-6 weeks · Cooldown: ~12-month

  1. Round 0: Recruiter Phone Screen

    Phone · ~30 min · difficulty 1/5 · elimination round

    Mode of interview: Remote phone or video interview

  2. Round 1: Google Hiring Assessment (GHA) — often bypassed at senior level

    Assessment · ~30-45 min · difficulty 1/5 · elimination round

    Mode of interview: Online assessment

  3. Round 2: Technical Phone Screen(s) (coding)

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

    Mode of interview: Remote phone or video interview

    Sample question: LRU Cache — Design a Least-Recently-Used (LRU) cache supporting get(key) and put(key, value) in O(1) average time. When capacity is exceeded, evict the least recently used key.

  4. Round 3: Onsite Coding Round 1

    Onsite · 45 min · difficulty 4/5

    Mode of interview: Onsite or virtual onsite interview

    Sample question: Find Median from Data Stream — Design a data structure that supports adding integers from a stream and querying the median of all elements seen so far, both efficiently (add in O(log n), median in O(1)).

  5. Round 4: Onsite Coding / Role-Related Knowledge

    Onsite · 45 min · difficulty 4/5

    Mode of interview: Onsite or virtual onsite interview

    Sample question: Merge k Sorted Lists — Given k sorted lists, merge them into a single sorted list and output it. Aim for O(N log k) time using a min-heap.

  6. Round 5: System Design

    System_design · 45 min · difficulty 4/5

    Mode of interview: Live system design interview

    Sample question: Design YouTube (video upload, processing, and playback at scale) — Design a YouTube-like system: video upload and transcoding pipeline, CDN-backed storage and streaming, metadata + view-count storage, search, and recommendation surfacing. Cover data model, scaling, and key trade-offs (consistency of view counts, hot-video caching, adaptive bitrate).

  7. Round 6: Googleyness & Leadership (Behavioral)

    Behavioral · 45 min · difficulty 3/5

    Mode of interview: Live behavioral interview

  8. Round 7: Hiring Committee Review

    Other · ~1-2 weeks · difficulty 3/5

    Mode of interview: Interview format varies by team

  9. Round 8: Team Matching & Offer

    Offer · Days to many weeks · difficulty 1/5

    Mode of interview: Offer discussion

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.