Google interview questions
Google's loop in India is mostly coding. After a recruiter call, campus candidates take an online coding test and experienced candidates get a 45-minute screen. Then come several 45-minute interviews and a Googleyness round. A hiring committee decides from written feedback, and team matching can add weeks or months after that. Many L3 offers in India go to people with one or two years of experience, so it isn't a fresher-only level.
Roles covered: Software Engineer (SWE II, III and Senior), interns and new-grad engineers in Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Pune, much of it under Google Cloud. We are not affiliated with Google and this is not an official question bank. It describes what candidates consistently report, reviewed for the 2025–26 hiring cycle. Confirm the current process on the company’s own careers page before you apply.
Recruiter call
15 to 30 minutes, non-technical
Your background, projects, notice period and salary expectations. Agree a preparation window before the interviews are scheduled.
Online assessment or phone screen
Campus: a timed coding test. Experienced: about 45 minutes on Google Meet in a shared doc, without an IDE
Data structures and algorithms. You'll code without autocomplete, so practise writing clean code in a plain editor.
Interview loop
Usually 3 to 5 interviews of about 45 minutes each, mostly virtual
Medium-to-hard coding, with graphs and trees reported most. System design is added from about L4, and at L5 you're expected to drive it.
Googleyness and Leadership
Behavioural, about 45 minutes, sometimes held only after the coding rounds go well
Collaboration, comfort with ambiguity, and whether you change your mind when the evidence changes.
Hiring committee and team matching
Decided from written feedback by people who didn't interview you
Nothing to prepare here. Expect a wait, because team matching can stall even after the committee approves.
Find the shortest path between two points in a grid or graph.
Graph problems come up more than any other topic. Say whether BFS or Dijkstra fits and why, then code it. Expect a follow-up that changes one constraint, like weighted edges or blocked cells.
Solve a tree problem, such as finding the lowest common ancestor.
Talk through recursion versus iteration and handle the empty and single-node cases. Interviewers watch whether you test your own code with a small example.
Design a data structure that supports a few operations efficiently.
Many Google problems are design-flavoured coding, like a time-based queue or a file system with edge cases. Ask clarifying questions first, list the operations, then pick a structure for each.
What's the time and space complexity, and can you do better?
Every round asks this. State the complexity without being asked, then discuss the trade-off of the faster version before you write it.
(L4 and above) Design a distributed cache or a news-feed service.
Start with requirements and scale, then sketch the components, the data model and how you'd handle failures. At L5 you're expected to lead the conversation.
Tell me about yourself and a project you're proud of.
Keep it to two minutes and end on the project you most want to be asked about. It often opens the technical rounds too.
Tell me about a time you led without a formal title.
Pick a real example where you moved a team or a decision forward. Say what you did, what changed, and what you'd do differently.
Describe a disagreement with a teammate and how it ended.
Show that you listened and could be persuaded. A story where you were simply right reads badly in this round.
How do you work when the requirements are unclear?
Describe how you ask questions, make a reasonable assumption, state it, and check back. The Googleyness round looks for comfort with ambiguity.
- Practise coding in a plain doc without autocomplete. That's how most India screens and loops run.
- Graphs and trees are the most reported topics. Cover them well before you move to rarer patterns.
- Plan for a long wait after the loop. Team matching can take weeks or months, so keep other interviews going.
Practise them, don’t only read them
Practise these against an AI interviewer that asks the follow-ups and scores your answer, including the HR questions on notice period and expected CTC. Or check your resume first with the free ATS score checker.
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