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Interview experience
Google · Software Engineer · Senior
Community-sourced A factual summary of an interview experience shared publicly outside interviewd.
Nov 1
Rejected
Overall Experience
A senior onsite for an Applied AI role with two coding rounds and one system design round. The candidate reported that interruptions in the first coding round disrupted the flow of the interview, and recruiter feedback described that round and the system design round as below expectations.
3 rounds
I
Posted by interviewdInterview Process (3 rounds)
Round 1 of 3: Coding / DSA
60 min
Question 1
MediumImplement set_cell and get_cell operations for a spreadsheet. The interviewer gave three requirements together, including follow-ups, without labeling which were follow-ups. Partway through, the candidate was told to implement only the basic functionality first. The interviewer then asked for the second requirement and said to ignore the third. The full requirement wording was not reported.
Experience
The candidate implemented the basic behavior, then the second requirement, with about five minutes remaining. The interviewer repeatedly asked for dry runs without giving feedback, and the candidate reported finding no problems. The round was failed.
60 min
Question 1
MediumA coding problem titled 'Google Shop'. The prompt details were not reported.
Experience
The interviewer did not interrupt, and the candidate completed all follow-up requirements smoothly.
60 min
Question 1
MediumDesign a customer-support chat system in which users communicate in real time with a virtual agent. A conversation escalates to a human agent when the virtual agent cannot resolve the issue, when the user explicitly requests a human, or when a high-risk intent is detected. Functional requirements: users create support conversations and send and receive real-time messages; the virtual agent processes messages and produces automated replies; escalation is triggered by an explicit request, a low-confidence or unsupported response, or high-priority intents such as fraud, account security, or refund disputes; after escalation the conversation is routed to an appropriate human agent who can view the full history and continue the chat; if no agent is available, the conversation enters a waiting queue and the user sees queue status; a human agent can close, transfer, or return a conversation to the virtual agent; and conversation history is persisted and retrievable by conversation ID. Non-functional requirements: horizontal scaling and high availability, low-latency message delivery, message ordering within a conversation, no conversation handled by multiple human agents at once, and consideration of agent presence, skill tags (such as billing, account, and shipping), and load balancing. Describe the core APIs, services and storage, the conversation state machine, the escalation and agent-assignment flow, and reliability and scalability choices.
Experience
The interviewer used a highly interrogative style, asking several questions after each statement and rarely letting the candidate lead the discussion. The candidate reported that the issues were resolved and the interviewer raised no objections. Recruiter feedback described this round as below expectations.
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