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Google interview guide

Builds Search, Cloud, Android, YouTube and Gemini; known for story-wrapped algorithm problems coded in a doc without running code, Googleyness, and slow team matching. Updated October 2026.

Google at a glance
Category FAANG
Intern level Software Engineering Intern (BS, MS, PhD tracks; US, EMEA, India). India also runs 6-month SWE internships and a 2nd-year Associate Software Developer Intern (ASDI) program. STEP (1st/2nd-year US program) is discontinued as a named program.
New grad level L3 (Software Engineer II, 'SWE II'). Postings say 'Software Engineer, Early Career' (US) or 'Software Engineer, University Graduate' (India). Levels.fyi: 'L3 / T3 is the new grad software engineering role at Google'.
0 to 3 years L3 for 0 to about 2 years; L4 (SWE III) typically from about 2 to 3+ years (Levels.fyi L4 data points start at 2 YOE; Hello Interview's L4 guide says 3+ years). Candidates with 1 to 3 years are often interviewed for L3; strong L3 feedback can trigger an L4 check (Europe Dec 2025 report, where one interviewer blocked L4).
Online assessment Google Hiring Assessment (online workstyle questionnaire) for most applicants; coding OA on HackerRank, Codility or Google's internal platform for some roles and campuses : GHA: situational statements rated on an agree/disagree scale (Aced: 50 to 75 items). Coding OA: 1 to 2 problems in 60 to 90 min; India campus OA: 2 hard problems with hidden tests (you do not see pass/fail until after).
Coding rounds New grad: 1 technical screen + 2 onsite coding rounds (some loops 3). Intern: 2 technical interviews.
Behavioral Googleyness and Leadership (G&L); Google Hiring Assessment for workstyle
Timeline Official: 'roughly 6-8 weeks'. Reported 2025 to 2026: India L3 GHA Jul 1, phone screens Jul 15 to 16, onsite later; University Grad 2026 (location not stated): applied Apr, interviews Jun to Aug 2025. Team match ranges from days to months; HC after or alongside team match; then comp call and offer within about a week. 2027-start Early Career postings were live on Oct 4, 2026 (for example 'Software Engineer, Infrastructure, PhD, Early Career, 2027 Start'). Summer 2027 US BS intern posting went up about Jul 20, 2026 with a short early window (Jugal's Aug 2026 post, citing Extern, describes a mid-Oct to early-Nov 2025 window for Summer 2026). interviewing.io: you can interview at Google three times in 5 years.
New grad pay Levels.fyi (fetched Oct 4, 2026), US Software Engineer L3: average total comp $216,032 from 58 recent data points; p25 $180,000, median $204,000, p75 $224,000 (page range $169K to $242K+); median base $164,000, median stock $25,000/yr. L4: average $306,501. India L3 total comp starts around INR 3.55M (Levels.fyi India page). UK L3 around GBP 118K (Levels.fyi UK page). Intern: US Summer 2027 BS posting lists a $98,000 to $131,000 annualized base; Simplify cites $47 to $63/hour; India interns reported INR 1.35 lakh/month stipend (2025).
Official links Careers, Students, Official interview prep, Values

Interview process

New grad

  1. Application and resume screen. Apply on Google Careers (referral helps). Official how-we-hire page: the process typically takes 'roughly 6-8 weeks'. University Graduate 2026 candidates (Aug 2025 posts; location not stated, but 'University Graduate' is the title Google uses for India postings) reported a 'Hiring Interest Form' about a month after applying, then interviews 1 to 3 months later.
  2. Google Hiring Assessment (GHA) and optional coding exercise. Official: before interviews 'you may be asked to take the Google Hiring Assessment, designed to measure workstyle skills', and possibly a role-related assessment like a coding exercise. GHA is a situational Likert-scale questionnaire (Aced: 50 to 75 items; answer consistently; on policy violations answer per policy). Coding OA when given: 1 to 2 questions in 60 to 90 min on HackerRank or Google's platform (Aced). Referral or recruiter-sourced candidates often skip the coding OA.
  3. Recruiter conversation(s). Official: 'one or two shorter conversations over phone or video with your recruiter' covering key skills, preferences, location.
  4. Technical screen (TPS). 45 min, one coding problem (sometimes two) in Google's shared interview editor, which does not run code; you walk through your code line by line on your own example; follow-ups on complexity and language functions (Aced new grad guide; LeetCode reports 2025 to 2026). Some loops call this the elimination round.
  5. Googleyness and Leadership (G&L) screen. 45 min behavioral, often back-to-back with the technical screen for US Early Career (LeetCode Dec 2025: 'Round-1 (45-min technical and 45-min behavioral)'). In some India University Graduate loops the last 15 min of a technical round is Googleyness instead.
  6. Onsite coding rounds. Two 45-min coding rounds, one problem each with follow-ups. Official interview-tips page: 'We've reintroduced in-person interviews for some roles. In many cases, you'll complete initial interviews virtually before coming onsite.' A 2027-start Early Career posting says 'In most instances, this position requires in-person interviews'. In person you code on a Google-provided Chromebook in the same shared editor (Aced; LeetCode: Kirkland in-person invite for Feb 27, 2026; Bangalore onsites Jan 2026 and Sep 2026). Some L3 loops run 3 coding rounds plus G&L (Europe Dec 2025; India Apr to May 2025 after a 45-min elimination round). An extra round may be added when signal is mixed or code comprehension is weak (University Grad 2026 report, Aug 2025).
  7. Feedback, team matching, hiring committee, offer. Recruiter shares round feedback; packet goes to team matching (fit calls with hiring managers) and Hiring Committee review, then compensation call and offer. Order varies: India L3 Sep 2026 had team match in 2 business days, then HC, offer 3 days later; Hello Interview notes EU offices often team-match before HC. Validity of passed interviews: interviewing.io says 'good for about a year'; an India L3 candidate who cleared in May 2025 reported the packet expired unmatched in Jun 2026; a Feb 2026 London/Dublin candidate's recruiter said 18 months.
  8. 2026 pilot (select US teams). Business Insider (May 2026): Google is piloting, for junior to mid-level SWE roles on select US teams (Cloud, Platforms and Devices first), a 'code comprehension' round where candidates use Gemini to 'read, debug, and optimize' existing code from the second half of 2026; the G&L round adds a technical design discussion of a past project; for junior candidates one technical round becomes an open-ended engineering challenge. Standard loops still ban AI ('AI tools are not permitted to be used during your interviews', official).

Intern

  1. Apply in the short window. US Summer 2027 BS SWE intern posting (posted about Jul 20 to 21, 2026, now closed): 'The anticipated application window is open until July 24th, 2026'; the posting was an 'early consideration' window and said 'the same applications will open again during our regular fall recruiting cycle'; it is 'intended for students in all academic years'. Needs resume plus a current unofficial or official transcript in English; hearing back 'can take upwards of 90+ days'. EMEA: the London 'Software Engineering, Site Reliability Engineering BS/MS Intern, 2027' posting was open on Oct 4, 2026 with 'Please complete your application before 23rd October 2026'; it requires at least 13 weeks over Summer 2027 and offers no immigration sponsorship.
  2. Recruiter or staffing call. Short Google Meet call: resume, projects, preferred coding language, how much DSA practice you have; it can filter candidates with little prep (Aced intern guide; India 2025 reports).
  3. Online assessment (some candidates). Off-campus: 1 to 2 questions, 60 to 90 min, Codility or HackerRank, plus the Hiring Assessment questionnaire (Aced). India on-campus OAs are harder: 2 problems rated roughly Codeforces 1800 to 2000 with hidden test cases (LeetCode Aug 2025, IIT Hyderabad Nov 2025).
  4. Two technical interviews. 45 to 60 min each, shared doc with no IDE, no autocomplete, no running code; easy to medium with twists (intervals, streams, heaps, trees, BFS); interviewers expect clarifying questions and self-written test cases (Aced). Some India 6-month intern rounds are 30 min with one tree problem plus follow-ups.
  5. Host (team) matching. After passing, a questionnaire on product interests, then 30 to 60 min calls with hosts; can take weeks and some candidates who pass are never matched (Aced intern guide).

With 1 to 3 years of experience

With 1 to 3 years you are usually interviewed for L3 (L4 from about 2 to 3+ years). Expect a technical phone screen or elimination round, then 2 to 4 coding rounds plus Googleyness; 2026 India L3 reports show 1 virtual coding + 1 virtual Googleyness, then 2 in-person coding rounds at the office. System design is not part of L3 or L4 loops: Hello Interview says Google reserves system design for L5 and above, and its L4 loop is 3 to 4 coding rounds plus one behavioral round (interviewing.io only notes that more experience brings more design and domain questions). Down-leveling happens (a Jan 2025 India candidate with 5.7 years was steered to L3) and strong L3 feedback can trigger an L4 check (Europe Dec 2025). Team matching for India L3 candidates has taken 4 to 11+ months in 2025 to 2026 reports; in May 2025 an India candidate was told the position had been filled after clearing onsites, and an Apr 2026 post reported a packet expiring after about 12 months without a match.

Online assessment

  • Platform: Google Hiring Assessment (online workstyle questionnaire) for most applicants; coding OA on HackerRank, Codility or Google's internal platform for some roles and campuses
  • Format: GHA: situational statements rated on an agree/disagree scale (Aced: 50 to 75 items). Coding OA: 1 to 2 problems in 60 to 90 min; India campus OA: 2 hard problems with hidden tests (you do not see pass/fail until after).
  • Notes: Referral and recruiter-sourced candidates often skip the coding OA but usually take the GHA. Answer the GHA consistently and pick clear positions; on ethics scenarios follow company policy regardless of seniority (LeetCode Sep 2026 report). Extern reports that failing a coding sample blocks another for 6 months [UNVERIFIED against Google].

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

Coding rounds

  • Rounds: New grad: 1 technical screen + 2 onsite coding rounds (some loops 3). Intern: 2 technical interviews.
  • Style: Custom, story-wrapped DSA problems rather than verbatim LeetCode; medium to hard; one main problem per 45 min plus layered follow-ups (new constraints, streams, files, scale, top K). Many involve designing a small class or API (AdService, chat log processor, BookShelfManager).
  • Environment: Google's shared interview editor: no code execution and no autocomplete; Hello Interview calls the current tool VIP (syntax highlighting, real-time collaboration) and says it replaced plain Google Docs, while candidates still describe a 'shared doc'. In-person rounds use a Google-provided Chromebook with the same interface. Official: 'Google Search and AI are amazing tools, but are not permitted to be used during your interviews', except the 2026 Gemini pilot round.
  • Graded on: Structured rubrics (official: 'Every candidate is assessed using clear rubrics'). Reported focus: clarifying questions before coding, choice of data structures and representation, clean readable code ('code comprehension' feedback), complexity analysis, self-testing with dry runs, communication, and how you use hints.
  • Reported focus topics: Graphs: BFS/DFS, shortest path, minimax paths (Dijkstra or binary search plus BFS), Intervals and sweep line, Heaps and priority queues, often inside a small class design, Hashing and prefix sums, Dynamic programming including tree DP and 2D DP, Binary search on the answer, Monotonic stack, Trees (binary and N-ary) and recursion, Strings and parsing, Union-Find, Tries combined with hash maps, Streams, files and scale follow-ups

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

What they ask (data)

Based on 825 distinct problems tagged to Google in the last 6 months (277 in the last 30 days, 532 in the last 3 months, 2228 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 54%, Easy 30%, Hard 17%

Most tagged topics (share of problems): Array 58%, Hash Table 22%, String 22%, Dynamic Programming 17%, Math 17%, Sorting 16%, Binary Search 11%, Depth-First Search 11%, Two Pointers 11%, Breadth-First Search 10%

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 Two Sum Easy 30 days Array, Hash Table
2 Add Two Numbers Medium 30 days Linked List, Math, Recursion
3 Palindrome Number Easy 30 days Math
4 Trapping Rain Water Hard 30 days Array, Two Pointers, Dynamic Programming, Stack
5 Longest Substring Without Repeating Characters Medium 30 days Hash Table, String, Sliding Window
6 Median of Two Sorted Arrays Hard 30 days Array, Binary Search, Divide and Conquer
7 3Sum Medium 30 days Array, Two Pointers, Sorting
8 Best Time to Buy and Sell Stock Easy 30 days Array, Dynamic Programming
9 Longest Common Prefix Easy 30 days Array, String, Trie
10 Longest Consecutive Sequence Medium 30 days Array, Hash Table, Union-Find
11 Reverse Integer Medium 30 days Math
12 Container With Most Water Medium 30 days Array, Two Pointers, Greedy
13 Majority Element Easy 30 days Array, Hash Table, Divide and Conquer, Sorting
14 Valid Parentheses Easy 30 days String, Stack, Bracket Sequences
15 Concatenation of Array Easy 30 days Array, Simulation
16 Remove Duplicates from Sorted Array Easy 30 days Array, Two Pointers
17 Merge Two Sorted Lists Easy 30 days Linked List, Recursion
18 Longest Palindromic Substring Medium 30 days Two Pointers, String, Dynamic Programming, Manacher
19 Merge Sorted Array Easy 30 days Array, Two Pointers, Sorting
20 Maximum Subarray Medium 30 days Array, Divide and Conquer, Dynamic Programming
21 Sqrt(x) Easy 30 days Math, Binary Search, Newton's Method
22 Rotate Array Medium 30 days Array, Math, Two Pointers
23 Koko Eating Bananas Medium 30 days Array, Binary Search
24 Pow(x, n) Medium 30 days Math, Recursion
25 Subarray Sum Equals K Medium 30 days Array, Hash Table, Prefix Sum
26 Valid Anagram Easy 30 days Hash Table, String, Sorting
27 Spiral Matrix Medium 30 days Array, Matrix, Simulation
28 Number of Islands Medium 30 days Array, Depth-First Search, Breadth-First Search, Union-Find
29 Split Array Largest Sum Hard 30 days Array, Binary Search, Dynamic Programming, Greedy
30 Merge Strings Alternately Easy 30 days Two Pointers, String
31 Roman to Integer Easy 30 days Hash Table, Math, String
32 Reverse Linked List Easy 30 days Linked List, Recursion
33 Search in Rotated Sorted Array Medium 30 days Array, Binary Search
34 LRU Cache Medium 30 days Hash Table, Linked List, Design, Doubly-Linked List
35 Group Anagrams Medium 30 days Array, Hash Table, String, Sorting
36 Climbing Stairs Easy 30 days Math, Dynamic Programming, Memoization
37 Rotate Image Medium 30 days Array, Math, Matrix
38 Move Zeroes Easy 30 days Array, Two Pointers
39 Largest Rectangle in Histogram Hard 30 days Array, Stack, Monotonic Stack, Range Minimum/Maximum Query
40 N-Queens Hard 30 days Array, Backtracking, Algorithm X
41 Binary Search Easy 30 days Array, Binary Search
42 Remove Element Easy 30 days Array, Two Pointers
43 4Sum Medium 30 days Array, Two Pointers, Sorting
44 House Robber Medium 30 days Array, Dynamic Programming
45 Happy Number Easy 30 days Hash Table, Math, Two Pointers, Floyd's Cycle Finding Algorithm
46 Kth Largest Element in an Array Medium 30 days Array, Divide and Conquer, Sorting, Heap (Priority Queue)
47 Max Consecutive Ones Easy 30 days Array
48 Generate Parentheses Medium 30 days String, Dynamic Programming, Backtracking, Bracket Sequences
49 Single Element in a Sorted Array Medium 30 days Array, Binary Search
50 Contains Duplicate Easy 30 days Array, Hash Table, Sorting

Signature problems

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

# Problem Difficulty Last seen Topics
1 Add Two Integers Easy 30 days Math
2 Missing Number Easy 30 days Array, Hash Table, Math, Binary Search
3 Number of Visible People in a Queue Hard 30 days Array, Stack, Monotonic Stack
4 Sort an Array Medium 30 days Array, Divide and Conquer, Sorting, Heap (Priority Queue)
5 Length of Last Word Easy 30 days String
6 Reverse Vowels of a String Easy 30 days Two Pointers, String
7 Maximum XOR of Two Numbers in an Array Medium 30 days Array, Hash Table, Bit Manipulation, Trie
8 Sum of Subarray Minimums Medium 30 days Array, Dynamic Programming, Stack, Monotonic Stack
9 Can Make Arithmetic Progression From Sequence Easy 30 days Array, Sorting
10 Remove Duplicates from Sorted Array II Medium 30 days Array, Two Pointers
11 Insert Interval Medium 30 days Array
12 Range Sum Query - Immutable Easy 30 days Array, Design, Prefix Sum
13 Single Number II Medium 30 days Array, Bit Manipulation
14 Network Delay Time Medium 30 days Depth-First Search, Breadth-First Search, Graph Theory, Heap (Priority Queue)
15 Find the Difference Easy 30 days Hash Table, String, Bit Manipulation, Sorting
16 Find the Highest Altitude Easy 30 days Array, Prefix Sum
17 Stone Game Medium 30 days Array, Math, Dynamic Programming, Minimax
18 Implement Stack using Queues Easy 30 days Stack, Design, Queue
19 Delete Nodes And Return Forest Medium 30 days Array, Hash Table, Tree, Depth-First Search
20 Invert Binary Tree Easy 30 days Tree, Depth-First Search, Breadth-First Search, Binary Tree

Reported in 2025 to 2026 interviews

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

Question Role When Source
Variation of Maximum Good Subarray Sum: return any index pair instead of the max sum L3 SWE II, India 2026-09 post
String of only 'a' and 'b' (even counts): make at most 2 cuts so Alice and Bob get equal numbers of each letter; return the cut indices (also reported Jun 2025 as a diamonds and rubies garland) L3 SWE II, India (onsite) 2026-09 post
Remove one element, then decide if the remaining array can be split into two subarrays with equal sum L3 SWE II, India (onsite) 2026-09 post
Longest increasing subsequence where consecutive elements differ by exactly 1; follow-up: difference in range 1 to d L3 SWE II, India (phone screen) 2026-09 post
Directed graph with edge security levels: minimum S needed to travel from u to v (minimize the max edge on the path) L3, India (Sep 2026) and Europe (Dec 2025) onsite 2026-09 post
Binary tree with edge weights: minimum total cut cost to disconnect the root from all leaves; follow-ups: N-ary tree, negative weights L3 SWE II, India (onsite) 2026-09 post
Roster of (name, start, end): return every time interval with the list of people present (sweep line) L3 SWE (Sep 2026, location not stated) and L3 London phone screen (Jan 2026) 2026-09 post
AdService with insertAd(content, score) and getAd(): highest score first, never the same ad twice in a row, score drops by 1 after each use L3 SWE 2026-09 post
Count triplets (i, j, k) where adjacent substrings s(i..j) and s(j+1..k) have the same set of distinct characters L3 SWE 2026-09 post
N x N board with N-1 non-attacking rooks hidden; using only countRooksInsideRectangle(a, b, c, d), find where to place the Nth rook with few API calls L3 London (Jan 2026) and L3 Bangalore (May 2026) 2026-01 post
Chat log processor: registerEvent(sender, receiver, timestamp) and getMostActiveUser(); follow-ups: top K users, write-heavy workload L3 London 2026-01 post
Design a BookShelfManager class: addBooks, removeBooks, moveBooks, getBooks, set/get bookmark index L3 London 2026-01 post
Flights between airports with departure and arrival times: BFS over time-feasible connections L3 Bangalore (onsite) 2026-05 post
Count ordered pairs (i, j) with a(i) - a(j) = i - j (complement of Count Number of Bad Pairs) L3 Europe (phone screen) 2025-12 post
Split a data size into the minimum number of packets of bounded capacity, minimizing the largest packet L3 Europe (onsite) 2025-12 post
Events sorted by timestamp with IDs: does any event exceed a timeout? Follow-ups: O(1) space, events stored in one or many files L3 Europe (onsite) 2025-12 post
From an endless stream of integers, emit triplets as soon as max minus min is at most d, never reusing elements Early Career II, US (phone screen) 2025-07 post
Shortest path (fewest edges) in a directed graph from A to B avoiding obstacle nodes Early Career II, US (onsite) 2025-07 post
Merge Intervals variation Early Career II, US (onsite) 2025-07 post
Word transformation: minimum single-character edits from source to target using a word list; follow-up: return the path SWE Intern (virtual onsite) 2026-03 post
Routers on a 2D plane relay messages within range 10: can a message from A reach B? University Graduate 2026, India 2025-11 post
Count 'islands' of 1-valued nodes in a binary tree; follow-up: size of each island University Graduate 2026, India 2025-11 post
Trapping Rain Water variation with fountains: water flows from given indices until a higher wall University Graduate 2026, India 2025-09 post
Binary tree of doubles: replace values with reciprocals, swap children, delete the subtree rooted at any node equal to the mode Software Development Intern 2026 (round 1, 45 min; location not stated) 2025-10 post
Campus OA: for each tree node, /root-to-node path sum minus subtree sum/, summed; binary string with point updates and queries for the longest substring starting and ending with 1 On-campus OA (University Graduate), India 2025-11 post
Weighted graph: remove a node and its edges, return the maximum remaining edge weight; optimize to O(1) per query L3 SWE II 2026-05 post
Stream of sequence numbers starting at x: add(y) and getMinimumMissing() (MEX-like); follow-ups on where to do the work and real-world frame loss L3 SDE-II, India (elimination round) 2025-06 post

Beyond LeetCode

Google Hiring Assessment (workstyle questionnaire). 2026 pilot: 'code comprehension' round reading, debugging and optimizing an existing codebase with Gemini, plus an open-ended engineering challenge round for junior candidates (Business Insider, May 2026). Occasional 'explain this code, give complexity, optimize it' round without writing code (US Early Career L3, Jul 2025). Official page mentions project work for some roles (case study, writing or code samples). Some API-call-minimization problems (rook placement with a countRooks rectangle query).

System design

No dedicated system design round for L3 new grads, interns, or L4 (Hello Interview: Google reserves system design for L5 and above; Sep 2024 blog: 'System design interviews are not conducted for entry-level (L3) or mid-level (L4) positions'). Coding rounds often contain light object design (implement a class with several methods, e.g. AdService, BookShelfManager). In the 2026 pilot, the Googleyness and Leadership round adds a technical design discussion about a past project, so be ready to defend your own architecture choices.

Start with who needs system design, then the framework.

Behavioral

Framework: Googleyness and Leadership (G&L); Google Hiring Assessment for workstyle (official page)

What they look for:

  • Collaboration and resolving conflict toward a team outcome rather than winning
  • Handling ambiguity and unclear requirements
  • Ownership, prioritization, and decision-making under deadlines
  • Doing the right thing on ethics and policy questions
  • Learning from feedback and failure
  • Leadership without a title (influencing peers, mentoring)
  • Concrete actions under follow-up: exactly what you would say and do
  • How you use AI tools in daily work (asked in 2026)

Questions to prepare:

  • How do you handle conflict in a team?
  • How do you handle requirements that are unclear?
  • A stakeholder sets an unreasonable deadline and keeps following up. What do you do?
  • Someone has taken credit for your work multiple times. How do you deal with it?
  • Tell me about a time you missed a deadline.
  • How do you use AI in your daily work?
  • What would you want at work that does not exist today?
  • How would you handle another team rewriting code you wrote, where the rewrite broke functionality?
  • Tell me about a time you received critical feedback and what you changed.
  • Tell me about a time you had to get people on the same page about a decision.

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

Tips

  • Practice in a plain doc with no autocomplete and no run button, then dry-run your own test cases out loud; Google's doc does not execute code and AI tools are banned in standard rounds.
  • Ask clarifying questions before coding; prompts are short, story-wrapped and sometimes deliberately vague (Aced).
  • Budget 10 minutes for follow-ups: new constraints, top K, streams or files. Reports show candidates losing rounds on the follow-up, not the main problem.
  • Model data cleanly (structs or classes, named fields); interviewers comment on representation and 'code comprehension', not just correctness.
  • Prepare Googleyness answers for hypotheticals (conflict, unclear requirements, credit-taking) and a concrete story about how you use AI at work.
  • Treat the Google Hiring Assessment seriously: answer consistently and choose clear positions.
  • Expect in-person onsite rounds on a Chromebook and plan travel; for the 2026 pilot, practice reading and debugging unfamiliar code with an AI assistant (Jugal's Jul 2026 post).
  • After passing, drive team matching: tell your recruiter your interests and stay flexible on team and location; matches can take weeks to months.

4-week plan for Google

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 Googleyness and Leadership (G&L); Google Hiring Assessment for workstyle round. Do 2 full mock loops. Review the online assessment and system design notes above.

Sources

Watch out: Re-verified Oct 4, 2026 by a second agent: every URL in sources returned HTTP 200 (LeetCode Discuss posts read through LeetCode's GraphQL API, which also confirmed every post slug and every LeetCode problem slug). Official Google pages: how-we-hire and interview-tips text is present in the page HTML; confirmed quotes include 'roughly 6-8 weeks', the Google Hiring Assessment, 'one or two shorter conversations', 'Every candidate is assessed using clear rubrics', 'AI tools are not permitted', and 'We've reintroduced in-person interviews for some roles' [VERIFIED]. CORRECTED in this pass: L4 loops do not include a dedicated system design round (Hello Interview L4 guide and Sep 2024 blog), so earlier 'L4 can include one design round' was removed; L4 experience range widened to 2 to 3+ years; US location removed from University Grad and roster-question claims where posts do not state it; hiring-freeze wording fixed (recruiter said the position was filled; 'hiring freeze' was the candidate's word); intern 'round 1' post does not state India. The 2026 AI-assisted pilot is confirmed by Business Insider (May 7, 2026; Google spokesperson and VP of recruiting Brian Ong quoted): junior to mid-level roles, select US teams, Cloud and Platforms and Devices first, Gemini allowed in the code comprehension round from the second half of 2026 [VERIFIED secondary]. Validity of results (about 12 vs 18 months) and the 6-month coding-sample cooldown (Extern) remain recruiter or third-party claims [UNVERIFIED]. Google Tech Dev Guide and Interview Warmup (cited in Jugal's Part 3 post) have moved. STEP is not listed among Google's internship programs (official internships page lists Engineering and technical, Research, Business); Simplify's Google FAQ still describes STEP (stale).

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