LinkedIn interview process (2026)

Round-by-round breakdown of the LinkedIn software engineering interview across 4 levels and 26 rounds: interview mode, sample questions, and worked solutions.

LinkedIn salary & ratings · All interview processes

Software Engineering Intern (Summer / 6-month, Bengaluru)

Difficulty: Medium · Timeline: ~2-3 weeks · Recommended prep: 6-10 weeks · Cooldown: No formally documented cooldown for interns; candidates who

  1. Round 0: Online Assessment (HackerRank, web-proctored)

    Assessment · ~90 minutes · difficulty 2/5 · elimination round

    Mode of interview: Online assessment · HackerRank

    Sample question: Maximum Subarray — Given an integer array nums, find the contiguous subarray (containing at least one number) with the largest sum and return that sum. Solve in O(n) time and O(1) space.

  2. Round 1: Technical Interview 1 (DSA coding)

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

    Mode of interview: Live interview · HackerRank CodePair

    Sample question: Shortest Word Distance II — Design a data structure initialized with a list of words that answers repeated queries: given two distinct words, return the minimum index distance between them in the list. Preprocess so each query is efficient. Input: first line is the word list (space-separated); each following line is two query words; print one distance per query.

  3. Round 2: Technical Interview 2 (DSA + core CS)

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

    Mode of interview: Remote phone or video interview

    Sample question: Find First and Last Position of Element in Sorted Array — Given a sorted array of integers nums and a target, return the starting and ending index of the target as [first, last], or [-1, -1] if not present. Must run in O(log n). Input: first line is the sorted array (space-separated); second line is the target.

  4. Round 3: Hiring / Host Manager Round

    Behavioral · ~15-60 minutes · difficulty 1/5

    Mode of interview: Live behavioral interview

  5. Round 4: HR / Behavioral Round + Offer

    Offer · ~30-50 minutes · difficulty 1/5

    Mode of interview: Offer discussion

Software Engineer (IC2/IC3, entry-to-mid) — Bengaluru

Difficulty: Medium · Timeline: ~3-5 weeks · Recommended prep: 6-10 weeks · Cooldown: 6-12 months

  1. Round 0: Recruiter Phone Screen

    Phone · ~15-30 min · difficulty 1/5 · elimination round

    Mode of interview: Remote phone or video interview

  2. Round 1: Online Assessment (HackerRank) — freshers/campus only

    Assessment · 5-2 hours · difficulty 2/5 · elimination round

    Mode of interview: Online assessment · HackerRank

    Sample question: Nested List Weight Sum — Given a nested list of integers, return the sum of all integers weighted by their depth (top-level depth = 1). Input is the nested-list literal on one line, e.g. [[1,1],2,[1,1]].

  3. Round 2: Technical Phone Screen (CoderPad)

    Phone · ~45-60 min · difficulty 2/5 · elimination round

    Mode of interview: Live interview · CoderPad

    Sample question: Max Consecutive Ones III — Given a binary array and integer k, return the length of the longest subarray containing only 1s after flipping at most k zeros. Input: n and k on line 1, then the array.

  4. Round 3: Onsite: Coding Round

    Onsite · ~45-60 min · difficulty 3/5

    Mode of interview: Live interview · CoderPad

    Sample question: Can Place Flowers — Given a flowerbed (array of 0s and 1s where no two 1s are adjacent) and an integer n, return whether n new flowers can be planted without violating the no-adjacent rule. Input: m and n on line 1, then the m-element flowerbed. Output true/false.

  5. Round 4: Onsite: AI-Enabled Coding Round

    Onsite · ~45-60 min · difficulty 3/5

    Mode of interview: Live interview · CoderPad

    Sample question: Maximum Subarray — Given an integer array, find the contiguous subarray with the largest sum and return that sum (Kadane's algorithm). Input: n on line 1, then the array.

  6. Round 5: Onsite: System Design (HLD)

    System_design · ~45-60 min · difficulty 3/5

    Mode of interview: Live system design interview

    Sample question: Design LinkedIn's messaging system — Design LinkedIn's 1:1 and group messaging (InMail + chat): message send/deliver/read-receipt flow, real-time delivery via WebSockets, message ordering, offline queuing, and storage. Discuss the API, data model, and how it scales.

  7. Round 6: Onsite: Hiring Manager / Behavioral

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

    Mode of interview: Live behavioral interview

Senior Software Engineer (Senior IC) — Bengaluru

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

  1. Round 0: Recruiter Phone Screen

    Phone · ~15-30 min · difficulty 1/5 · elimination round

    Mode of interview: Remote phone or video interview

  2. Round 1: Technical Phone Screen (CoderPad)

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

    Mode of interview: Remote phone or video interview

    Sample question: Max Stack — Design a stack supporting push(x), pop(), top(), peekMax() and popMax() (remove and return the maximum element, top-most if ties). Input: q on line 1, then q operations (e.g. 'push 5', 'popMax').

  3. Round 2: Onsite: Coding Round

    Onsite · ~45-60 min · difficulty 3/5

    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 (changing one letter at a time, each intermediate in the list), or 0 if none. Input: beginWord endWord on line 1, then n, then the n dictionary words.

  4. Round 3: Onsite: AI-Enabled Coding Round

    Onsite · ~45-60 min · difficulty 4/5

    Mode of interview: Live interview · CoderPad

    Sample question: Maximum Product Subarray — Given an integer array, find the contiguous subarray with the largest product and return that product. Input: n on line 1, then the array.

  5. Round 4: Onsite: System Design (HLD)

    System_design · ~45-60 min · difficulty 4/5

    Mode of interview: Live system design interview

    Sample question: Design LinkedIn's feed ranking system — Design LinkedIn's home feed for ~1B users: candidate generation from the connection graph, ranking/personalization, real-time vs precomputed fan-out, caching, and freshness. Cover the ML-serving path, storage, and how you scale ranking to billions of items.

  6. Round 5: Onsite: Craftsmanship / Project Deep-Dive

    Onsite · ~45-60 min · difficulty 3/5

    Mode of interview: Onsite or virtual onsite interview

  7. Round 6: Onsite: Hiring Manager / Behavioral

    Behavioral · ~45-60 min · difficulty 3/5

    Mode of interview: Live behavioral interview

Staff Software Engineer (IC5) — Bengaluru

Difficulty: Hard · Timeline: ~5-8 weeks · Recommended prep: 10-14 weeks · Cooldown: 6-12 months

  1. Round 0: Recruiter Phone Screen

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

    Mode of interview: Remote phone or video interview

  2. Round 1: Technical Phone Screen (CoderPad)

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

    Mode of interview: Remote phone or video interview

    Sample question: Insert Delete GetRandom O(1) - Duplicates allowed — Design a collection supporting insert(x), remove(x) and getRandom(), all in average O(1), with duplicate values allowed (getRandom must return each element with probability proportional to its multiplicity). Input: q on line 1, then q operations. insert/remove print true/false; getRandom prints a value.

  3. Round 2: Onsite: Coding Round

    Onsite · ~45-60 min · difficulty 3/5

    Mode of interview: Onsite or virtual onsite interview

    Sample question: All O`one Data Structure — Design a structure supporting inc(key), dec(key), getMaxKey() and getMinKey(), each in O(1). inc adds a key (or increments its count); dec decrements (removing at 0). Input: q on line 1, then q operations. getMaxKey/getMinKey print a key with the max/min count.

  4. Round 3: Onsite: AI-Enabled Coding Round

    Onsite · ~45-60 min · difficulty 4/5

    Mode of interview: Live interview · CoderPad

    Sample question: Find Leaves of Binary Tree — Given a binary tree, repeatedly collect and remove all leaves, grouping nodes by the round in which they are removed (equivalently by height from the bottom). Input: level-order tokens with 'null' for missing children, on one line. Output each group on its own line.

  5. Round 4: Onsite: System Design (HLD) — heavily weighted

    System_design · ~45-60 min · difficulty 4/5

    Mode of interview: Live system design interview

    Sample question: Design a distributed search / inverted index (Elasticsearch-style) — Design a distributed inverted-index search system: document ingestion and tokenization, index sharding and replication, query routing and scatter-gather, ranking, near-real-time refresh, and fault tolerance at LinkedIn scale.

  6. Round 5: Onsite: Project / Architecture Deep-Dive

    Onsite · ~45-60 min · difficulty 3/5

    Mode of interview: Onsite or virtual onsite interview

  7. Round 6: Onsite: Hiring Manager / Behavioral (leadership)

    Behavioral · ~45-60 min · difficulty 3/5

    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.