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Google Software Developer Interview Questions, Process, and Tips

Updated 20 Jan 2025

Top Google Software Developer Interview Questions and Answers

  • Q1. Painter's Partition Problem Statement Given an array/list representing boards, where each element denotes the length of a board, and a number ‘K’ of available painters, ...read more
  • Q2. Special Numbers Problem Statement Your task is to find the total count of special numbers within a range from 1 to a given integer, 'MAXVAL'. A special number is defined ...read more
  • Q3. Chocolate Distribution Problem You are given an array/list CHOCOLATES of size 'N', where each element represents the number of chocolates in a packet. Your task is to di ...read more
View all 85 questions

Google Software Developer Interview Experiences

88 interviews found

I applied via Referral and was interviewed in May 2022. There were 5 interview rounds.

Round 1 - Resume Shortlist 
Pro Tip by AmbitionBox:
Keep your resume crisp and to the point. A recruiter looks at your resume for an average of 6 seconds, make sure to leave the best impression.
View all tips
Round 2 - Coding Test 

Pretty standard but took 2 hours you should work on basics

Round 3 - One-on-one 

(4 Questions)

  • Q1. This was very easy simple
  • Q2. Ffttyftftft. D. Did d d d. D d
  • Q3. D d d₹dddd₹d y y y y y y
  • Q4. Y y y y y y y y
Round 4 - Assignment 

If you had experience you would know

Round 5 - Group Discussion 

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Interview Preparation Tips

Interview preparation tips for other job seekers - Work hard a lot good luck hi hi hi hi guubygygygygyhgy hgygy high. Gg g g. G
Interview experience
4
Good
Difficulty level
Moderate
Process Duration
2-4 weeks
Result
Selected Selected

I applied via Approached by Company and was interviewed before Apr 2023. There were 5 interview rounds.

Round 1 - Coding Test 

Focuses on DSA and problem solving. Provides editor with basic syntax highlighter. It takes close to 1 hour.

Round 2 - Coding Test 

Focuses on DSA, leaning towards LLD. Rest of the stuffs are similar to above.

Round 3 - Coding Test 

Very similar to first round.

Round 4 - System Design 

(1 Question)

  • Q1. A very specific subproblems, rather than a zoomed out version. One is expected to deep dive and talk about both FR and NFR
Round 5 - Values and Leadership 

(1 Question)

  • Q1. Typical values and leadership rounds, conversational in nature, asked about real and hypothetical situations.

Interview Preparation Tips

Topics to prepare for Google Software Developer interview:
  • Data Structures
  • Algorithms
  • System Design
  • values
  • Leadership
Interview preparation tips for other job seekers - Practice Medium & Hard problems, aim to write flawless and clean code within reasonable time.
Focus on system design fundamentals more on design a big picture.
Follow STAR for behavioral round

Software Developer Interview Questions Asked at Other Companies

asked in Amazon
Q1. Maximum Subarray Sum Problem Statement Given an array of integers ... read more
asked in Amazon
Q2. Minimum Number of Platforms Needed Problem Statement You are give ... read more
asked in Rakuten
Q3. Merge Two Sorted Arrays Problem Statement Given two sorted intege ... read more
asked in Cognizant
Q4. Nth Fibonacci Number Problem Statement Calculate the Nth term in ... read more
Q5. Find Duplicate in Array Problem Statement You are provided with a ... read more
Interview experience
5
Excellent
Difficulty level
Hard
Process Duration
4-6 weeks
Result
Not Selected

I applied via Company Website and was interviewed before Jun 2023. There were 3 interview rounds.

Round 1 - Coding Test 

Data Structures and basic algorithms like sorting and advanced topics like dynamic programming are also covered.The interview was 45 mins.

Round 2 - Coding Test 

The same again regarding DSA and knowledge of OOPs was also required

Round 3 - HR 

(2 Questions)

  • Q1. Why should we hire you
  • Q2. Give reasons for not selecting you
Round 1 - HR 

(2 Questions)

  • Q1. What is your Expected Salary?
  • Q2. What is your current salary?

Interview Preparation Tips

Interview preparation tips for other job seekers - Work on Algorithm for improve logic skill and Practice code.Best of Luck

Google interview questions for designations

 Software Developer Intern

 (15)

 Junior Software Developer

 (1)

 Full Stack Software Developer

 (1)

 Developer

 (2)

 Software Engineer

 (98)

 Software Tester

 (2)

 Java Developer

 (7)

 Web Developer

 (5)

Interview experience
4
Good
Difficulty level
Moderate
Process Duration
4-6 weeks
Result
Not Selected

I applied via LinkedIn and was interviewed before Mar 2023. There was 1 interview round.

Round 1 - Technical 

(1 Question)

  • Q1. Few easy to moderate DSA questions

Get interview-ready with Top Google Interview Questions

I applied via Walk-in and was interviewed in May 2022. There were 2 interview rounds.

Round 1 - Resume Shortlist 
Pro Tip by AmbitionBox:
Keep your resume crisp and to the point. A recruiter looks at your resume for an average of 6 seconds, make sure to leave the best impression.
View all tips
Round 2 - Group Discussion 

How do project

Interview Preparation Tips

Topics to prepare for Google Software Developer interview:
  • Retail Banking Operations
Interview preparation tips for other job seekers - Why do you want this job's
How do you get this information
Interview experience
5
Excellent
Difficulty level
Hard
Process Duration
More than 8 weeks
Result
Selected Selected

I applied via Approached by Company and was interviewed before May 2022. There were 3 interview rounds.

Round 1 - Resume Shortlist 
Pro Tip by AmbitionBox:
Keep your resume crisp and to the point. A recruiter looks at your resume for an average of 6 seconds, make sure to leave the best impression.
View all tips
Round 2 - One-on-one 

(3 Questions)

  • Q1. Tell me about yourself
  • Q2. What is your experience
  • Q3. Elaborate your day to day job
Round 3 - Coding Test 

1-2 hrs of interview across data structure

Interview Preparation Tips

Interview preparation tips for other job seekers - All the best

I was interviewed in Mar 2021.

Round 1 - Coding Test 

(2 Questions)

Round duration - 75 minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

A 24 hour window was given to us and we can attempt the test anytime in between. It included 2 coding questions. One was easy-medium level and the other one was hard. Along with this 7 debugging MCQ's were given, however they were easy.

  • Q1. 

    Minimum and Maximum Candy Cost Problem

    Ram is in Ninjaland, visiting a unique candy store offering 'N' candies each with different costs. The store has a special offer: for every candy you purchase, you c...

  • Ans. 

    Find minimum and maximum cost to purchase all candies with special offer of free candies.

    • Iterate through the candy costs array and sort it in ascending order.

    • For minimum cost, start from the lowest cost candy and take free candies until reaching the next higher cost candy.

    • For maximum cost, start from the highest cost candy and take free candies until reaching the next lower cost candy.

  • Answered by AI
  • Q2. 

    Swap And Maximize Problem Statement

    You are given a circular array consisting of N integers. Your task is to find the maximum sum of the absolute differences between adjacent elements by rearranging the a...

  • Ans. 

    Find the maximum sum of absolute differences between adjacent elements in a circular array by rearranging the elements.

    • Sort the array in non-decreasing order.

    • Alternate between picking the smallest and largest elements to maximize the sum of absolute differences.

    • Calculate the sum of absolute differences between adjacent elements in the rearranged array.

  • Answered by AI
Round 2 - Coding Test 

(1 Question)

Round duration - 75 minutes
Round difficulty - Hard

  • Q1. 

    Connecting Ropes with Minimum Cost

    You are given 'N' ropes, each of varying lengths. The task is to connect all ropes into one single rope. The cost of connecting two ropes is the sum of their lengths. Yo...

  • Ans. 

    Connect ropes with minimum cost by merging two smallest ropes at a time.

    • Sort the array of rope lengths in ascending order.

    • Merge the two smallest ropes at a time and update the cost.

    • Repeat until all ropes are merged into one.

    • Return the total cost as the minimum cost to connect all ropes.

  • Answered by AI

Interview Preparation Tips

Professional and academic backgroundI applied for the job as SDE - 1 in PuneEligibility criteriaabove 7 cgpaGoogle interview preparation:Topics to prepare for the interview - google kickstart problems, dsa, graphs, trees, stackTime required to prepare for the interview - 4 monthsInterview preparation tips for other job seekers

Tip 1 : practice regularly in kickstart rounds
Tip 2 : solve previous year problems
Tip 3 : coding ninjas also has google asked problems

Application resume tips for other job seekers

Tip 1 : Do not fake any skills, projects or achievements. The interviewer gets to know about it by asking questions to you.
Tip 2 : Have at-least one good project on resume with all the details like technologies used and purpose.
Tip 3 : Don't write achievements which doesn't relate to your role. Write achievements which shows communication skills, leadership or teamwork.

Final outcome of the interviewRejected

Skills evaluated in this interview

I was interviewed in Dec 2020.

Round 1 - Coding Test 

(2 Questions)

Round duration - 60 minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

This round was held on Hackerearth from 2:00 PM to 3:00 PM
This round had 2 questions of easy/medium difficulty. Both were based on concepts of DP.
The use of offline IDE was prohibited so we were supposed to code it on Hackerearth IDE itself.

  • Q1. 

    Min Steps to One Using Dynamic Programming

    Given a positive integer N, your task is to determine the minimum number of steps required to reduce N to 1.

    Allowed Operations:

    1) Subtract 1 from it: n = n -...
  • Ans. 

    Find the minimum number of steps to reduce a positive integer to 1 using given operations.

    • Use dynamic programming to store the minimum steps for each number from 1 to N.

    • Iterate through each number from 1 to N and calculate the minimum steps based on the given operations.

    • Consider the cases where you can either subtract 1, divide by 2, or divide by 3 to find the minimum steps.

    • Return the minimum steps needed to reduce the

  • Answered by AI
  • Q2. 

    Longest Palindromic Substring Problem Statement

    You are provided with a string STR of length N. The goal is to identify the longest palindromic substring within this string. In cases where multiple palind...

  • Ans. 

    Identify the longest palindromic substring in a given string.

    • Iterate through the string and expand around each character to find palindromes

    • Keep track of the longest palindrome found

    • Return the longest palindrome with the smallest start index

  • Answered by AI
Round 2 - Video Call 

(2 Questions)

Round duration - 45 minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

The round was held on Google Meet and I was given 2 coding problems for which first I had to explain my approach and then I had to write code in Shared Google Docs and dry run on sample test cases and discuss Time and Space Complexity.
There were 2 interviewers and both were very friendly and helpful and tried to bring us to our comfort level first.

  • Q1. 

    Boyer Moore Algorithm for Pattern Searching

    You are given a string text and a string pattern. Your task is to find all occurrences of pattern in the string text and return an array of indexes of all those...

  • Ans. 

    Implement Boyer Moore Algorithm to find all occurrences of a pattern in a text string.

    • Implement Boyer Moore Algorithm for efficient pattern searching.

    • Iterate through the text string and compare the pattern with each substring of the text.

    • Return an array of indexes where the pattern is found in the text.

    • If pattern not found, return an array containing -1.

  • Answered by AI
  • Q2. 

    Median in a Stream Problem Statement

    Your task is to determine the median of integers as they are read from a data stream. The median is the middle value in the ordered list of numbers. If the list length...

  • Ans. 

    Find median of integers in a data stream as they are read. Return medians after each new element.

    • Use a min heap to store the larger half of the numbers and a max heap to store the smaller half.

    • Keep the sizes of the two heaps balanced to efficiently find the median.

    • If the total number of elements is odd, the median is the top element of the max heap.

    • If the total number of elements is even, the median is the average of t

  • Answered by AI
Round 3 - Coding Test 

(3 Questions)

Round duration - 90 minutes
Round difficulty - Hard

This round was also virtual. It has some difficult questions when compared to the previous rounds.
This was also held on Google Meet with shared docs for writing code.
There were 2 interviewers and both were helpful.

  • Q1. 

    Shortest Alternate Colored Path Problem

    Given a directed graph consisting of 'N' nodes labeled from '0' to 'N-1'. Each edge in the graph is colored either 'red' or 'blue'. The graph may include self-edges...

  • Ans. 

    The task is to compute the shortest path from node '0' to each node in a directed graph with alternating colored edges.

    • Create a graph using the given red and blue edges.

    • Use Breadth First Search (BFS) to find the shortest path from node '0' to each node with alternating colored edges.

    • If no such path exists, set the answer to -1.

    • Return the array of shortest path lengths for each node.

  • Answered by AI
  • Q2. 

    Spell Checker Problem Statement

    You are provided with a list of strings, DICTIONARY[], representing the correct spellings of words, and a query string QUERY that may contain misspelled words. Your task is...

  • Ans. 

    Implement a spell checker function that suggests correct spellings from a dictionary for a given query string.

    • Iterate through the dictionary to check for matching prefixes with the query string.

    • Return a list of suggestions if the query string is misspelled, otherwise return an empty list.

    • Ensure all strings are in lowercase and within the specified constraints.

    • Handle multiple test cases as per the input format.

    • Example: ...

  • Answered by AI
  • Q3. 

    The Skyline Problem

    Compute the skyline of given rectangular buildings in a 2D city, eliminating hidden lines and forming the outer contour of the silhouette when viewed from a distance. Each building is ...

  • Ans. 

    Compute the skyline of given rectangular buildings in a 2D city, eliminating hidden lines and forming the outer contour of the silhouette.

    • Iterate through the buildings and create a list of critical points (x, y) where the height changes.

    • Sort the critical points based on x-coordinate and process them to form the skyline.

    • Merge consecutive horizontal segments of equal height into one to ensure no duplicates in the output.

  • Answered by AI

Interview Preparation Tips

Professional and academic backgroundI completed Computer Science Engineering from Delhi Technological University. I applied for the job as SDE - 1 in BangaloreEligibility criteriaNo CriteriaGoogle interview preparation:Topics to prepare for the interview - Data Structures - Trie, HashMap, Sets, Priority Queue, Stack, Advanced Topics like Fenwick Tree, Segment Trees, Game Theory, Dynamic Programming, Union Find, Graph Algorithms, BitmasksTime required to prepare for the interview - 5 monthsInterview preparation tips for other job seekers

Tip 1 : Reading other’s interview experiences is one of the best ways to get yourselves ready for the next job interview. Practice daily atleast 5 questions.
Tip 2 : Most commonly asked topics in Google Interviews ( as per the mail I received from my recruiter ) :
BFS/DFS/Flood fill, Binary Search, Tree traversals, Hash tables, Linked list, stacks, queues, two pointers/sliding window
Binary heaps, Ad hoc/string manipulations.
Tip 3 : Highly recommended sites for practicing questions ( usually practice medium and hard level questions) -

Leetcode (highly encouraged)
Geeksforgeeks (highly encouraged)
CodeZen( highly encouraged)
Codeforces

Application resume tips for other job seekers

Tip 1 : Mention past working experience in detail as how you were important to your previous company.
Tip 2 : Try to keep your resume to 1 page if work experience < 5 years
Tip 3 : Update your resume according to role you are applying for and never put false things on resume.

Final outcome of the interviewSelected

Skills evaluated in this interview

I was interviewed in Nov 2020.

Round 1 - Coding Test 

(2 Questions)

Round duration - 60 minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

This round was held on Hackerearth from 2:00 PM to 3:00 PM
This round had 2 questions of easy/medium difficulty. Both were based on concepts of DP.
The use of offline IDE was prohibited so we were supposed to code it on Hackerearth IDE itself.

  • Q1. 

    Min Steps to One Using Dynamic Programming

    Given a positive integer N, your task is to determine the minimum number of steps required to reduce N to 1.

    Allowed Operations:

    1) Subtract 1 from it: n = n -...
  • Ans. 

    Find the minimum number of steps to reduce a positive integer to 1 using dynamic programming.

    • Use dynamic programming to keep track of the minimum steps for each number from 1 to N.

    • Consider the three allowed operations and their impact on the number of steps.

    • Start from N and work backwards to 1, updating the minimum steps for each number.

    • Optimize the solution by storing the minimum steps for previously calculated number

  • Answered by AI
  • Q2. 

    Find the Longest Palindromic Substring

    Given a string ‘S’ composed of lowercase English letters, your task is to identify the longest palindromic substring within ‘S’.

    If there are multiple longest palin...

  • Ans. 

    Find the longest palindromic substring in a given string, returning the rightmost one if multiple exist.

    • Use dynamic programming to check for palindromes within the string.

    • Keep track of the longest palindromic substring found so far.

    • Return the rightmost longest palindromic substring if multiple exist.

  • Answered by AI
Round 2 - Video Call 

(2 Questions)

Round duration - 45 minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

The round was held on Google Meet and I was given 2 coding problems for which first I had to explain my approach and then I had to write code in Shared Google Docs and dry run on sample test cases and discuss Time and Space Complexity.
There were 2 interviewers and both were very friendly and helpful and tried to bring us to our comfort level first.

  • Q1. 

    Pattern Matching Problem Statement

    Given a pattern as a string and a set of words, determine if the pattern and the words list align in the same sequence.

    Input:
    T (number of test cases)
    For each test ca...
  • Ans. 

    Given a pattern and a list of words, determine if the words align with the pattern.

    • Create a mapping between characters in the pattern and words in the list.

    • Check if the mapping preserves the order of characters in the pattern.

    • Return 'True' if the sequence of words matches the order of characters in the pattern, otherwise return 'False'.

  • Answered by AI
  • Q2. 

    Running Median Problem

    Given a stream of integers, calculate and print the median after each new integer is added to the stream.

    Output only the integer part of the median.

    Example:

    Input:
    N = 5  
    Stre...
  • Ans. 

    Calculate and print the median after each new integer is added to the stream.

    • Use two heaps - a max heap to store the smaller half of the numbers and a min heap to store the larger half.

    • Keep the sizes of the two heaps balanced or differ by at most 1 to get the median efficiently.

    • When a new integer is added, compare it with the current median and insert it into the appropriate heap.

    • If the sizes of the heaps differ by mor...

  • Answered by AI
Round 3 - Coding Test 

(3 Questions)

Round duration - 90 minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

This round was also virtual. It has some difficult questions when compared to the previous rounds.
This was also held on Google Meet with shared docs for writing code.
There were 2 interviewers and both were helpful.

  • Q1. 

    Shortest Alternate Colored Path Problem

    Given a directed graph consisting of 'N' nodes labeled from '0' to 'N-1'. Each edge in the graph is colored either 'red' or 'blue'. The graph may include self-edges...

  • Ans. 

    The task is to compute the shortest path from node '0' to each node in a directed graph with alternating colored edges.

    • Create a graph using the given red and blue edges.

    • Use Breadth First Search (BFS) to find the shortest path from node '0' to each node.

    • Alternate between red and blue edges while traversing the graph.

    • If no path exists, set the answer to -1.

    • Return the array of shortest path lengths for each node.

  • Answered by AI
  • Q2. 

    Spell Checker Problem Statement

    You are provided with a list of strings, DICTIONARY[], representing the correct spellings of words, and a query string QUERY that may contain misspelled words. Your task is...

  • Ans. 

    Given a list of correct spellings and a query string, return a list of suggestions if the query is misspelled.

    • Iterate through the dictionary and check for matches with the query string using a prefix search algorithm.

    • Return a list of suggestions if the query is misspelled, otherwise return an empty list.

    • Handle multiple test cases by looping through each case and performing the spell check operation.

  • Answered by AI
  • Q3. 

    The Skyline Problem

    Compute the skyline of given rectangular buildings in a 2D city, eliminating hidden lines and forming the outer contour of the silhouette when viewed from a distance. Each building is ...

  • Ans. 

    Compute the skyline of given rectangular buildings in a 2D city, eliminating hidden lines and forming the outer contour of the silhouette.

    • Iterate through the buildings and create a list of critical points (x, y) where the height changes.

    • Sort the critical points based on x-coordinate and process them to form the skyline.

    • Merge consecutive horizontal segments of equal height into one to ensure no duplicates in the output.

  • Answered by AI

Interview Preparation Tips

Professional and academic backgroundI applied for the job as SDE - 1 in BangaloreEligibility criteriaNeed 2 years work experienceGoogle interview preparation:Topics to prepare for the interview - Data Structures - Trie, HashMap, Sets, Priority Queue, Stack, Advanced Topics like Fenwick Tree, Segment Trees, Game Theory, Dynamic Programming, Union Find, Graph Algorithms, BitmaskingTime required to prepare for the interview - 3 monthsInterview preparation tips for other job seekers

Tip 1 : Bookmark the GFG Google Archives. It helped me a lot during my preparations. Reading other’s interview experiences is one of the best ways to get yourselves ready for the next job interview. Practice daily atleast 5 questions.
Tip 2 : Most commonly asked topics in Google Interviews ( as per the mail I received from my recruiter ) : 
BFS/DFS/Flood fill, Binary Search, Tree traversals, Hash tables, Linked list, stacks, queues, two pointers/sliding window
Binary heaps, Ad hoc/string manipulations.
Tip 3 : Highly recommended sites for practicing questions ( usually practice medium and hard level questions) : 
Leetcode (highly encouraged)
Geeksforgeeks (highly encouraged)
CodeZen( highly encouraged)
Codeforces
Tip 4 : This is a great bigocheatsheet that could be of great help https://www.bigocheatsheet.com/

Application resume tips for other job seekers

Tip 1 : Mention past working experience in detail as how you were important to your previous company.
Tip 2 : Try to keep your resume to 1 page if work experience < 5 years
Tip 3 : Update your resume according to role you are applying for and never put false things on resume.

Final outcome of the interviewSelected

Skills evaluated in this interview

Google Interview FAQs

How many rounds are there in Google Software Developer interview?
Google interview process usually has 2-3 rounds. The most common rounds in the Google interview process are Coding Test, Technical and Resume Shortlist.
How to prepare for Google Software Developer interview?
Go through your CV in detail and study all the technologies mentioned in your CV. Prepare at least two technologies or languages in depth if you are appearing for a technical interview at Google. The most common topics and skills that interviewers at Google expect are CRM and SAP ABAP.
What are the top questions asked in Google Software Developer interview?

Some of the top questions asked at the Google Software Developer interview -

  1. Say you have three tables WORK, USERS, MANAGERS WORK - work_id - user_id - how_...read more
  2. a / b c / / d e f g Print the nodes in the following order: a...read more
  3. If you had an opportunity to design the Google Suggest system, please let us kn...read more
How long is the Google Software Developer interview process?

The duration of Google Software Developer interview process can vary, but typically it takes about less than 2 weeks to complete.

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Google Software Developer Interview Process

based on 106 interviews

3 Interview rounds

  • Coding Test Round - 1
  • Coding Test Round - 2
  • Coding Test Round - 3
View more
Google Software Developer Salary
based on 1.1k salaries
₹19.8 L/yr - ₹60 L/yr
327% more than the average Software Developer Salary in India
View more details

Google Software Developer Reviews and Ratings

based on 140 reviews

4.5/5

Rating in categories

4.5

Skill development

4.5

Work-life balance

4.5

Salary

4.4

Job security

4.5

Company culture

4.4

Promotions

4.5

Work satisfaction

Explore 140 Reviews and Ratings
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