Skip to content

Adobe interview guide

Creative, document and marketing software (Photoshop, Acrobat, Firefly, Experience Cloud). Interviews: HackerRank coding with runnable tests, LLD, C++/Java depth, director round; AI-assisted rounds emerging. Updated October 2026.

Adobe at a glance
Category Big Tech
Intern level '2027 Intern - Software Engineer' (US, posted Sep 18, 2026; San Jose, Waltham, San Francisco, Austin, Seattle, Lehi, New York; co-located hybrid). India: SWE intern and Product Intern with PPO to MTS-1; the Adobe India Hackathon (called 'Adobe University Hackathon' in 2026 candidate posts) is a campus route.
New grad level P10 Software Engineer 1 on Levels.fyi (entry level, 0 to 1 yrs). US posting title '2027 University Graduate - Software Engineer' (grad window Dec 2026 to Jun 2027). India title: MTS-1 (Member of Technical Staff I).
0 to 3 years India: MTS-2 for roughly 2 to 4 yrs; Computer Scientist 1 (CS-1) for roughly 4 to 6 yrs. US: Software Engineer 2 (P20) next; Levels.fyi typical YOE for P20: 2 to 3 (US) and 3 to 4 (India). Mapping of India MTS/CS titles to P-levels is not officially published.
Online assessment HackerRank (US intern/new grad and India experienced); Unstop for the 2025 Adobe India Hackathon (university); platform for the 2026 'Adobe University Hackathon' not confirmed. : US intern/new grad: 3 LeetCode mediums. India campus: 2 coding questions plus CS MCQs (OS, DBMS, OOP). Hackathon OA: timed MCQs (about 1 min each in 2026) plus 2 CP-style coding questions; one 2026 problem was a C++ OOP simulation.
Coding rounds New grad: 1 to 2 technical rounds. MTS-2: 2 to 4 rounds that include coding.
Behavioral Adobe values (2023): Create the Future, Own the Outcome, Raise the Bar, Be Genuine. Official hiring page asks for specific examples with measurable impact. Adobe's official 'AI and your hiring experience' page (2026) cites Create the Future and Be Genuine, so the 2023 values are still in use; it asks candidates to show concrete examples of how AI amplified their impact, in their own voice.
Timeline About 3 weeks from first interview to offer (Apr 2025 report); hiring drives finish all rounds in one day. Roles can close mid-process and you may repeat the last round with a new team (Jul 2026). A CS1 Bangalore drive was put on hold by a reported hiring freeze (Aug 2026). Cooling period: 6 months if you reapply to the same position (HR quote, Sep 2026); other roles can be applied to sooner. US postings: 2027 SWE intern opened Sep 18, 2026; 2027 University Graduate SWE opened Sep 24, 2026.
New grad pay Levels.fyi (data as of Oct 4, 2026), US: P10 Software Engineer 1 median TC about $164K (base $128K, stock $28K/yr, bonus $8K); P20 about $189K. Official 2027 University Graduate SWE posting (Sep 2026): base $76,700 to $152,200 (California and New York $105,100 to $152,200; Washington $101,300 to $146,750). 2027 SWE intern: $38 to $51 per hour. India: Levels.fyi P10 median about INR 25L TC. MTS-1 PPO offers (Aug 2025 Bangalore, Aug 2026 Noida): base INR 16L, 10% bonus, INR 3L joining plus INR 3L deferred bonus, RSUs about $32K to $34K over 4 yrs (first-year about INR 32L). MTS-2 India (May to Jun 2025 hiring-drive offers): base INR 24L to 27.5L plus $68.8K RSUs over 4 yrs; MTS-2 Noida (May 2026): INR 26L including PF plus $60K RSUs. RSUs vest 25% in year 1, then quarterly.
Official links Careers, Students, Official interview prep, Values

Interview process

New grad

  1. Application. Adobe careers (Workday). Official 5-stage flow: Application, Talent Partner conversation, Hiring Manager interview, Skills assessments and team interviews (for engineers: coding challenges, system design discussions, or portfolio reviews), Offer.
  2. Online assessment. US SWE intern loop (Nov 2024, Workfront team, Salt Lake City, virtual; written up Sep 2026): 3 LeetCode mediums on HackerRank. India campus (2024 to 2025): 2 coding questions (strings/hashmap, sliding window) plus MCQs on OS, DBMS, OOP. India SDE-1 OA (Aug 2025): tree DP with rerooting (diameter endpoints).
  3. Technical interview(s). US: 1 live problem-solving round (a medium string problem). India campus: interview 1 is DSA (medium-hard, brute force to optimal, complexity, 'what if input is huge'); interview 2 is a simple system design plus OOP (why interfaces, inheritance examples) and HashMap internals.
  4. Hiring manager / managerial round. Behavioral and team fit: a project you liked, a time you messed up, pressure, why Adobe. Followed by an HR offer call.

Intern

  1. OA. US (Nov 2024 report): HackerRank, 3 LeetCode mediums. India: the 2025 Adobe India Hackathon round 1 ran on Unstop (very theoretical MCQs plus coding). The 2026 'Adobe University Hackathon' OA (Aug 2026) had MCQs on a roughly 1-minute timer each plus 2 DSA questions (count nodes whose value plus children's values equals k; largest binary number by concatenation); other 2026 OA reports include a C++ OOP drone-energy simulation and a 'Hall of Shifting Tiles' problem. The 2026 platform was not confirmed.
  2. Technical interview. US: 1 live coding round. FY27 (Sep 2026): a candidate reported a HackerRank technical interview with a bug-fix question and a code-review question.
  3. Hiring manager fit. Behavioral, background, and the team.
  4. Conversion. India product and SWE interns receive PPOs to MTS-1 (Aug 2025 and Aug 2026 reports).

With 1 to 3 years of experience

MTS-2 (about 2 to 4 yrs) is the main 0 to 3 yr loop: 3 to 5 rounds, often a single-day hiring drive (Noida/Bangalore) or spread over 2 weeks. R1: DSA on HackerRank, code must pass 6 to 8 custom test cases (Merge Intervals, LFU Cache), plus OOP/SQL/caching talk. Language-depth round for the JD stack: C++ (smart pointers, rule of five, const member functions, producer-consumer with condition variables, implement shared_ptr) or Java (abstract class vs interface, threads, Spring Boot, SQL joins). LLD round (in-memory file system, warehouse space allocation, configuration management service, rate limiter, autocomplete). HM round with HLD (URL shortener, HLD of your own project). Director round: deep project defense, on-call incidents, manager conflict, sometimes coding ('give this to Claude and optimize it', Aug 2026). Frontend MTS-2: JS event loop, React typeahead with debouncing, React Fiber, pub/sub machine coding, frontend system design.

Online assessment

  • Platform: HackerRank (US intern/new grad and India experienced); Unstop for the 2025 Adobe India Hackathon (university); platform for the 2026 'Adobe University Hackathon' not confirmed.
  • Format: US intern/new grad: 3 LeetCode mediums. India campus: 2 coding questions plus CS MCQs (OS, DBMS, OOP). Hackathon OA: timed MCQs (about 1 min each in 2026) plus 2 CP-style coding questions; one 2026 problem was a C++ OOP simulation.
  • Notes: Reported OA problems: tree diameter endpoints with rerooting DP (Aug 2025), 'Hall of Shifting Tiles' (Aug 2026), drone energy simulation with inheritance and virtual functions (Aug 2026), candy-selling optimization (Jul 2025), largest binary number by concatenation (Aug 2026).

Prepare with How to pass an OA and compare formats in OA formats by company.

Coding rounds

  • Rounds: New grad: 1 to 2 technical rounds. MTS-2: 2 to 4 rounds that include coding.
  • Style: LeetCode medium to hard, often 2 to 3 problems per 45 to 60 min (one MTS-2 round: 2 mediums and 1 hard in 45 min). Language-specific implementation tasks (shared_ptr, thread-safe queue) and classic problems (Trapping Rain Water, Minimum Window Substring, Coin Change, Maximum Product Subarray).
  • Environment: HackerRank (CodePair) with runnable custom test cases; in-person drives at Noida/Bangalore offices. 2026: some rounds are Claude-assisted or ask you to optimize with Claude. Official AI policy (Adobe careers page 'AI and your hiring experience'): do not use AI recording, live scribing or conversation-prompting tools during hiring conversations unless invited.
  • Graded on: Running code that passes test cases, optimization from brute force, edge cases, explaining your thinking aloud, and language depth for the role's stack.
  • Reported focus topics: Arrays, strings and sliding window (Minimum Window Substring, Merge Intervals), Trees and tree DP (diameter, rerooting, org-tree propagation), Cache design (LRU, LFU, pluggable eviction), LLD: file system, warehouse, config service, autocomplete, rate limiter, C++ internals (smart pointers, rule of five, memory leaks) or core Java (OOP, concurrency, Spring Boot), Concurrency (producer-consumer, thread-safe queues, locks), DP (Coin Change, knapsack variants, subset counts), Frontend: JS event loop, debounce/throttle, React internals

Run every practice problem through the 45-minute framework and the code quality rubric.

What they ask (data)

Based on 16 distinct problems tagged to Adobe in the last 6 months (3 in the last 30 days, 6 in the last 3 months, 152 all-time) across two open datasets of LeetCode company tags. Tags are user-reported, so treat frequency as a signal, not a promise.

Difficulty mix (last 6 months): Medium 69%, Easy 19%, Hard 12%

Most tagged topics (share of problems): Array 62%, String 25%, Dynamic Programming 25%, Hash Table 19%, Depth-First Search 19%, Sorting 19%, Queue 12%, Linked List 12%, Design 12%, Doubly-Linked List 12%

Most frequent problems

Ranked by frequency, weighted toward the last 30 days. Classics like Two Sum sit near the top of almost every company's list because users tag them everywhere. Solve those fast. The signature list below is more specific to this company.

# Problem Difficulty Last seen Topics
1 Count Subarrays With Fixed Bounds Hard 30 days Array, Queue, Sliding Window, Monotonic Queue
2 LRU Cache Medium 30 days Hash Table, Linked List, Design, Doubly-Linked List
3 Maximize Distance to Closest Person Medium 30 days Array
4 Flatten Nested List Iterator Medium 3 months Stack, Tree, Depth-First Search, Design
5 Game of Life Medium 3 months Array, Matrix, Simulation
6 Gas Station Medium 3 months Array, Greedy
7 Group Anagrams Medium 6 months Array, Hash Table, String, Sorting
8 Two Sum Easy 6 months Array, Hash Table
9 Binary Tree Maximum Path Sum Hard 6 months Dynamic Programming, Tree, Depth-First Search, Binary Tree
10 Best Time to Buy and Sell Stock Easy 6 months Array, Dynamic Programming
11 Largest Number Medium 6 months Array, String, Greedy, Sorting
12 Basic Calculator II Medium 6 months Math, String, Stack
13 Heaters Medium 6 months Array, Two Pointers, Binary Search, Sorting
14 Is Subsequence Easy 6 months Two Pointers, String, Dynamic Programming
15 Minimum Cost For Tickets Medium 6 months Array, Dynamic Programming
16 Flatten a Multilevel Doubly Linked List Medium 6 months Linked List, Depth-First Search, Doubly-Linked List

Signature problems

Problems where Adobe accounts for a large share of all recent tags across companies. These are the most Adobe-specific questions in the data.

# Problem Difficulty Last seen Topics
1 Count Subarrays With Fixed Bounds Hard 30 days Array, Queue, Sliding Window, Monotonic Queue
2 Flatten Nested List Iterator Medium 3 months Stack, Tree, Depth-First Search, Design
3 Game of Life Medium 3 months Array, Matrix, Simulation
4 Minimum Cost For Tickets Medium 6 months Array, Dynamic Programming

Reported in 2025 to 2026 interviews

Questions candidates said they got, each linked to the post where it was reported.

Question Role When Source
OA: find all leaf nodes that are endpoints of some diameter of a tree (rerooting DP) SDE-1 OA (India) 2025-08 post
Hackathon OA: Hall of Shifting Tiles (orb on flipping arrows, total cost per start tile) Adobe University Hackathon 2026 OA (India) 2026-08 post
Hackathon OA (C++): drone energy simulation with constructor overloading, inheritance and virtual functions Adobe University Hackathon 2026 OA (India) 2026-08 post
Merge Intervals (must pass HackerRank custom tests) MTS-2 Java backend (3 YOE) 2026-08 post
LFU Cache MTS-2 Java backend (3 YOE) 2026-08 post
Rate limiter with a sliding window MTS-2 Java backend (3 YOE) 2026-08 post
Design a URL shortener (HLD in the HM round) MTS-2 Java backend (3 YOE) 2026-08 post
Sort an array of 0s, 1s and 2s without a general sort MTS-2 C++ (3 YOE) 2026-08 post
Implement a simplified shared_ptr with reference counting MTS-2 C++ (3 YOE) 2026-08 post
Design a thread-safe producer-consumer queue (what if consumers wait before producers start) MTS-2 C++ (3 YOE) 2026-08 post
Asteroid Collision Computer Scientist 1 hiring drive (Bangalore) 2026-08 post
Org tree: minimum time for a message from the CEO to reach everyone (parallel, then sequential) MTS-2 2025-11 post
In-memory file system (mkdir, ls, addFile, getFile; then generic file content) MTS-2 2025-11 post
Halve (ceil) an element K times to minimize the array sum MTS-2 2025-11 post
Autocomplete with top-K suggestions by search frequency MTS-2 2025-11 post
Minimum Window Substring MTS-2 C++ (2 YOE, Acrobat team) 2025-09 post
Factorial Trailing Zeroes MTS-2 C++ (2 YOE, Acrobat team) 2025-09 post
Maximum Product Subarray, then return the subarray MTS-2 (Noida) 2025-06 post
Trapping Rain Water MTS-2 (Noida) 2025-06 post
React typeahead with debouncing (and caching) MTS-II Frontend (3 YOE) 2026-07 post
Hackathon OA: arrange N binary strings to form the largest binary number (sort with comparator a+b > b+a) Adobe University Hackathon 2026 OA (India) 2026-08 post

Beyond LeetCode

Language-depth rounds (C++ memory model and concurrency, core Java, JavaScript runtime). LLD/machine coding (file system, warehouse, config service, pub/sub event bus in React). Director round mixing project defense, behavioral, and coding. Adobe India Hackathon (university, via Unstop). FY27 intern HackerRank interview with bug-fix and code-review questions (Sep 2026 report). AI-assisted coding: 'Claude assisted interview' question (May 2026) and a director asking to optimize code with Claude (Aug 2026). Resume-only rounds that validate every bullet against the JD stack (MTS-2 Java, Jul 2026).

System design

New grad: light, a simple system design plus OOP questions in interview 2 (India campus). MTS-2 (0 to 3+ yrs): a dedicated LLD round (in-memory file system, configuration management service, warehouse allocation, autocomplete top-K, rate limiter, LRU with pluggable eviction strategies) and HLD inside the HM round (URL shortener, design your current project). CS-1 adds a full HLD and a director-level design question (sales-related HLD, Aug 2026).

Start with who needs system design, then the framework.

Behavioral

Framework: Adobe values (2023): Create the Future, Own the Outcome, Raise the Bar, Be Genuine. Official hiring page asks for specific examples with measurable impact. Adobe's official 'AI and your hiring experience' page (2026) cites Create the Future and Be Genuine, so the 2023 values are still in use; it asks candidates to show concrete examples of how AI amplified their impact, in their own voice. (official page)

What they look for:

  • Clear thinking aloud and steady communication under pressure
  • Ownership: defend each technical decision in your projects
  • Measurable impact from past work (official tip)
  • Handling production incidents and on-call
  • Collaboration and disagreement with managers or other teams
  • How you use AI tools day to day, with concrete examples of impact (2026 rounds and the official AI-in-hiring page)

Questions to prepare:

  • Tell me about a project you liked.
  • Tell me about a time you messed up.
  • How do you deal with pressure?
  • Why Adobe?
  • Describe an on-call incident you handled.
  • Tell me about a conflict with your manager.
  • Describe a production issue you faced.
  • How do you use AI daily? If you wrote one Claude skill, what would it do?

Build your answers with the story bank. Company detail: behavioral guide.

Tips

  • Write complete, runnable code fast: Adobe rounds run on HackerRank with custom test cases, sometimes 2 to 3 problems in 45 min.
  • Prepare deep language questions for the stack in the JD (C++ memory and concurrency, or Java OOP and threads); a C++-heavy resume was rejected for a Java role after a bullet-by-bullet review.
  • Practice 4 LLDs: in-memory file system, LRU/LFU with pluggable eviction, rate limiter, and autocomplete with top-K.
  • Treat the director round as a real round: defend every design choice, have an on-call story and a manager-conflict story ready, and expect a coding question.
  • Practice reviewing and improving AI-generated code; 2026 Adobe rounds have asked candidates to work with Claude, and the 2027 intern and new-grad postings stress AI-assisted development with validation.
  • For the FY27 intern cycle, practice bug-fix and code-review exercises in addition to LeetCode (reported HackerRank format, Sep 2026).
  • Indian students: register for the Adobe India Hackathon on Unstop; its OA mixes hard theory MCQs with coding.
  • If rejected, apply to a different team rather than the same requisition; the same-position cooling period is 6 months.
  • Do not run AI note-takers, live scribing or prompting tools during Adobe interviews unless invited (official policy), and prepare concrete stories of how AI improved your work.

4-week plan for Adobe

Do this after you finish a core list like Grind 75 or NeetCode 150.

  • Week 1: Solve problems 1 to 20 from the most frequent list. Time-box each at 30 minutes.
  • Week 2: Solve problems 21 to 40. Re-solve any you failed in week 1 without looking.
  • Week 3: Solve the signature problems and every reported question above. Do 2 timed mock interviews.
  • Week 4: Write 8 stories for the Adobe values (2023): Create the Future, Own the Outcome, Raise the Bar, Be Genuine. Official hiring page asks for specific examples with measurable impact. Adobe's official 'AI and your hiring experience' page (2026) cites Create the Future and Be Genuine, so the 2023 values are still in use; it asks candidates to show concrete examples of how AI amplified their impact, in their own voice. round. Do 2 full mock loops. Review the online assessment and system design notes above.

Sources

Watch out: Most 2025 to 2026 reports are India experienced hires (MTS-2, CS-1). The only US intern/new-grad loop write-up describes a November 2024 loop (posted Sep 2026), and its author notes the format has likely drifted; FY27 'bug-fix plus code-review' HackerRank format is a single question post, not a full experience. India title to P-level mapping (MTS-1 = P10, MTS-2 = P20, CS-1 = P30) is commonly assumed but not officially published. The Aug 2026 hiring freeze is a single candidate's recruiter report. Adobe's values page link from adobe.com/diversity.html points to the 2023 blog post; no newer values list was found. Correction (Oct 4, 2026 fact-check): Adobe does publish an official candidate AI policy at careers.adobe.com/us/en/ai-and-your-hiring-experience (linked from How We Hire): use AI to sharpen ideas, not replace your voice; no AI recording, live scribing or conversation-prompting tools in hiring conversations unless invited. LeetCode posts read in full via LeetCode's API on Oct 4, 2026. Other fact-check fixes: the 2026 hackathon is called 'Adobe University Hackathon' in candidate posts and its platform is unconfirmed (Unstop is confirmed for 2025 only); P20 YOE now cites Levels.fyi US vs India separately; the May 2025 MTS-2 comp post does not name Noida, so the range now combines two 2025 offers; the Nov 2024 US loop is an intern loop. adobe.com pages block curl but load in a browser fetch (verified Oct 4, 2026); Workday postings verified via the Workday JSON API.

Next: All companies