Airbnb Software Engineer Interview Questions
131+ questions from real Airbnb Software Engineer interviews, reported by candidates.
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Hello everyone I am self taught and recently got invited to take the Airbnb assessment also it’s my first real online assessment. I passed the sample test but I want to make sure I’m focusing on the r
I used to read a lot of job search posts when I was struggling, so sharing mine after finally signing an offer (One offer from my dream company Airbnb, one from Doordash, and a few from other smaller
Helping the Leetcode Community! ``` For a given neighborhood and group size G, choose a subset of properties such that: - Total capacity >= Group_size - Among all such subsets, choose the one with min
Senior Interview HM Interview: I didn't expect it to be an interview, so I wasn't well-prepared and answered behavioral questions spontaneously. We went over the most interesting project, and the HM a
Airbnb Fullstack SDE Tech Phone Screen Experience in August
This post was last edited by Anonymous on 2025-09-30 15:54. My interview experience in August: Overall, it was a pretty good experience. The recruiter responded very promptly, and the follow-up after
New Coding Problem at Airbnb Tech Phone Screen for SDE Role
I read so many interview experiences on the forum, and Airbnb's coding seems really difficult, haha. I stayed up all night memorizing answers 😂 Then the next day they gave me a new question (at least
Airbnb Software Engineer Tech Phone Screen: Collatz Sequence Problem
The following content requires a score higher than 188. You can already view it. Collatz sequence The problem gives you a formula, for example, for even numbers, divide by 2, and for odd numbers, it b
Airbnb Front End Phone Screen: Connect Four Design
**Problem Description** Implement a simulation of the board game Connect Four. The game takes place on a vertically suspended grid with 7 columns and 6 rows. Two players take turns dropping tokens int
Airbnb onsite
Totally bombed this question. Feeling embarassed. Anyone know the solution to this ? given a list of menu items, how would you pick the most cost optimal option - [8.0...
Airbnb TPS
I got leetcode (3076. Shortest Uncommon Substring in an Array) with different form of input and output was expected in different way. eg // star_wars_titles = [// \'The Phantom Menace\', //...
Airbnb | G10 | Remote (US) | March 2024 [Reject]
Sharing my experience since I didn\'t find many posts on Airbnb Staff level. Round 1 (1h): With EM, discussing past projects Round 2: 2 Architecture/System Design (1h each) 1 Coding (45m) 1 Technical Background (1h) Coding...
Airbnb Phone Screen | Senior SDE
Location - India Duration - 45 mins [Including initial introductions and problem] Phone screen - Was asked variation of https://leetcode.com/problems/minimum-window-substring/ Expectation - Running code with working testcases on codepair
Airbnb phone screening
Create a simple implementation of the "4-in-a-row" game, also known as Connect Four. This game involves two players who take turns dropping their colored discs from the top into a...
AirBnb Senior Onsite
Code Review: Python Go read this repo to get context for the overall project: https://gist.github.com/airbnb-robot/af6e9068639733bff79d4e3773a8d1dc There are 3 pull requests: 1, 2, 3 They are in increasing order of complexity and difficulty. You...
Airbnb G8 [Offer]
1st round: Screening: Find next Biggest Pallindrome. 2nd Round: topological sort related question: Complete next sequence type of variant. 3rd round: System design: Slot Booking system and a lots of followups 4th round: HM. General discussion...
Airbnb SE Question
Does anyone understand what this question is asking? I noticed it\'s one of Airbnb\'s questions they ask during SE interview. Problem: given a list of leaf nodes in a pyramid \uFF0Cand a...
Airbnb OA question
There are \'n\' stones in a row from 0 to n-1. For every ith stone , there are 2 values associated with it, a[i] and b[i] . You have to...
Airbnb | Onsite | Check if thief can get from bottom to top without triggering any sensors
You are a thief standing in a room. The room has length L and width W. Your goal is to go from the bottom wall to anywhere on the top...
Round1: Hackerrank test One question : 90 minutes. There can be two questions as well. For me, it was only 1 question. Round 2: Coding Find the intersection of two singly linked list....
Airbnb L4 Interview | Bangalore
Online Assessment 1. Question related to binary search. Coding Round -1 You\'re given a 3x3 board of a tile puzzle, with 8 tiles numbered 1 to 8, and an empty spot. You...
What Airbnb Looks for in Software Engineer Interviews
Airbnb Software Engineer interviews are calibrated against the level and scope expected of the role. Across 131+ verified candidate reports on LeakCode, the consistent signals interviewers look for: clear problem decomposition before coding, explicit complexity reasoning, structured handling of edge cases, and the ability to articulate trade-offs between two reasonable approaches.
The discriminator between candidates who advance and candidates who do not is rarely the final correctness of the solution. It is the path to the solution: did you ask clarifying questions, did you state your approach before coding, did you handle edge cases without prompting, and did you communicate your reasoning throughout. Reports tagged "no hire" frequently cite a working solution with poor communication; reports tagged "strong hire" cite clear thinking even when the final solution was incomplete.
How To Use This Question Set
Real interview reports are a calibration tool, not a memorization target. Companies update their question pools every 2-4 months; memorizing exact problems risks misleading you when the interviewer uses a variant. The high-leverage use: identify the patterns that appear repeatedly in Airbnb Software Engineer reports, practice those patterns on similar (not identical) problems, and use the reports to understand the interviewer's typical follow-up depth.
Filter the questions below by round type, difficulty, and recency. Focus first on reports from the past 6-12 months; older reports may reference questions that have since rotated out of Airbnb's pool. Reports tagged with quantified difficulty (e.g., "medium-hard") are higher-signal than reports without difficulty tags.
Round-by-Round Expectations
Airbnb Software Engineer loops typically span 4-6 rounds across phone screens and on-site or virtual on-site interviews. The structure varies by company: some run 1 recruiter screen + 1 technical phone + 3-4 on-site rounds; others run 1 recruiter screen + 1 OA + 4-5 on-site rounds. The recruiter screen is logistics and culture-light; the technical phone screen is medium-difficulty coding; the on-site loop covers coding, system design (at L4+ levels), and behavioral rounds.
Each round is designed to surface a specific signal. Coding rounds: correctness, code quality, complexity reasoning, communication. System design rounds: requirements clarification, design judgment, operational thinking. Behavioral rounds: ownership scope, leadership, ambiguity tolerance, conflict navigation. Strong candidates explicitly hit each signal dimension out loud during the round; weak candidates focus only on solving the prompt.
Common Interview Mistakes At This Combination
Reports tagged "no hire" at Airbnb Software Engineer commonly cite: jumping into code without clarifying requirements, coding silently for 10+ minutes without verbalizing approach, missing edge cases (empty input, single element, very large input, overflow), and producing a working solution that the candidate cannot explain or refactor when probed. Strong candidates avoid these patterns by following a consistent template: clarify, verbalize approach, code with narration, test with examples.
Behavioral and design rounds have their own failure modes. Behavioral: stories that use "we" instead of "I" diluting individual signal, stories with no quantified outcome, defensiveness when probed about failure. Design: not asking clarifying questions, not stating requirements out loud, designing for a single server when the prompt clearly implies scale, ignoring operational concerns (deployment, monitoring, rollback). These show up in roughly half of Airbnb Software Engineer interview retrospectives on LeakCode.
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