Waymo interview guide¶

Alphabet's self-driving company (Waymo Driver, robotaxi); Google-style DSA loops with autonomy-flavored coding and design, and a strict no-AI interview policy. Updated October 2026.

Waymo at a glance
Category	High-growth tech
Intern level	2027 Summer Intern, separate BS, BS/MS, MS/PhD and PhD tracks (pay differs by degree). Hosted onsite, hybrid. Most postings are in Mountain View and San Francisco; 2027 postings also exist in London (MS/PhD simulation realism) and Warsaw (BS/MS software engineer).
New grad level	L3 Software Engineer (Levels.fyi: L3 is entry level, typically 0 to 1 yrs). Some new grad postings are PhD-only (e.g. Machine Learning Engineer Perception LLM/VLM, PhD New Grad).
0 to 3 years	L3 to L4 (Levels.fyi: L4 submitters have a median of about 3 yrs). Aced reports leveling is decided after the loop (its guide is written for ML and senior roles).
Online assessment	: No standard OA reported for SWE; screening is a live technical phone/video interview.
Coding rounds	1 to 2 phone screens + 2 coding rounds in the onsite (plus a JS/UI round for frontend-leaning roles).
Behavioral	Waymo values: Advance Safely, Honor Diversity, Innovate Always, Deliver Excellence, Earn Trust
Timeline	PracHub guide: about 4 rounds over 3 to 5 weeks; Aced: 4 to 6 weeks from application to offer, with a recruiter prep call before the final loop, which can be split across days. Summer 2027 intern postings opened late Aug to early Oct 2026 with rolling review. 1point3acres thread titles from Jul to Sep 2026 include an onsite followed by an HR follow-up delay; an Apr 2026 candidate got an automated rejection a week after the onsite with no feedback.
New grad pay	Levels.fyi (US, page updated Oct 4, 2026): L3 entry median total comp USD 221K (base 163K, stock 39.2K/yr, bonus 18.2K); L4 USD 325K. Levels.fyi shows Waymo equity (WMUs, Waymo's version of RSUs) vesting 25% after year 1, then monthly over the remaining 3 years. Summer 2027 intern hourly pay from Greenhouse postings: USD 60 (Bachelors), 70 (Masters), 85 (PhD). Non-senior full-time SWE postings show base ranges such as USD 170K to 216K and 175K to 215K (Oct 2026), not necessarily L3.
Official links	Careers, Students, Official interview prep, Values

Interview process¶

New grad¶

Recruiter or sourcer call. Official: recruiting reviews your resume and reaches out if matched; first call is with a sourcer or recruiter. Ask about timeline and role-specific stages here.
Technical phone / video screen(s). Official: 1 to 2 behavioral and/or technical phone or video interviews with a potential peer or manager. Reports: 45 to 60 min LeetCode medium in a collaborative editor (number-of-islands variant computing the boundary with water, Apr 2026; DP with follow-ups, May 2025; robot moving in four directions that must return to its start and avoid obstacles, Jun 2026; validate vehicle maintenance open/end events, PracHub page published Sep 2026). 1point3acres lists a new grad full-time tech phone screen thread from Aug 2026.
Virtual onsite. Official: up to 5 interviewers including potential teammates and cross-functional partners, about 45 min each. Typical 2026 SWE loops: 2 coding (often autonomy-flavored; the ObjectTracker problem that merges histories of two perception tracking systems appears in both Apr and May 2026 reports; car position tracker with bounded history), 1 system design (fleet map data collection, simulation system, matchmaking), 1 behavioral; frontend-leaning roles add a JavaScript/UI round; some loops add a hiring manager round.
Offer. Official: once Waymo decides you are the most qualified candidate, your recruiter makes an offer, then walks you through compensation, benefits and getting started. Loops are usually tied to a team: an Aug 2026 candidate interviewing with the Simulation team got a simulation design round. Aced (ML and senior roles) says leveling is decided after the loop.

Intern¶

Application. Postings are per team. 2027 Summer intern postings (SWE, ML, data, MBA) were first published between Aug 28 and Oct 2, 2026 and accept resumes on a rolling basis until filled. Postings say: apply to each role individually and only to your top 3. Most are in Mountain View and San Francisco; London and Warsaw intern postings also exist.
Recruiter screen. Background and role fit (official how-we-hire flow).
Technical interviews. Official flow lists 1 to 2 technical/behavioral phone or video interviews; ML intern candidates report a 'Data Fluency' round (Oct 2025 post). Detailed 2025 to 2026 SWE intern question reports were not found in free sources.
Conversion. Postings state interns are an important part of Waymo's recruiting pipeline. On Oct 4, 2026 the Greenhouse feed had no BS/MS new grad SWE posting (only a PhD new grad MLE role), so the internship is the clearest early-career entry.

With 1 to 3 years of experience¶

For 1 to 3 yrs (L3/L4) the loop is the same: phone screen, then about 4 onsite rounds. Expect at least one system design round even below senior; one May 2026 loop had two design rounds (matchmaking service; global cache for small images backed by one DB at hundreds of thousands of RPS). Fleet Response SWE loop (Apr 2026): progressive coding (consecutive-group partitioning), JavaScript tree-viewer UI round, HM round (production ownership, on-call, observability, stakeholder misalignment, GenAI use, root-causing unexpected system behavior), DSA round (car position tracker). Onboard and telematics roles may require C++ and test memory management and race conditions (PracHub guide). ML roles add ML fundamentals, ML coding with numpy, ML system design.

Online assessment¶

Format: No standard OA reported for SWE; screening is a live technical phone/video interview.
Notes: Official policy: complete any coding or technical assessment independently; AI tools or LLMs are not permitted unless the instructions say so.

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

Coding rounds¶

Rounds: 1 to 2 phone screens + 2 coding rounds in the onsite (plus a JS/UI round for frontend-leaning roles).
Style: LeetCode medium to hard, graph and grid heavy, often dressed in autonomy context (perception object tracking, maps, robot navigation, vehicle fuel/commands, maintenance events). Progressive problems that change constraints mid-round. Some interviewers invent their own graph problems.
Environment: Collaborative editor (tool name not confirmed in sources). Language of choice (C++, Python, Java) for general rounds; C++ may be required for onboard roles. No AI assistance in any live interview (official).
Graded on: Official tips: ask clarifying questions, define and frame the problem, communicate your thinking, refine to the most efficient solution, and say how you would test it. Reports add correctness first, then complexity, adapting as constraints change, and sometimes proving correctness.
Reported focus topics: Grid and graph BFS/DFS (Number of Islands variants, Shortest Distance from All Buildings, multi-source BFS), Greedy with hash maps / heaps (Hand of Straights, Split Array into Consecutive Subsequences, Minimum Number of Refueling Stops), Design-a-class problems with time-ordered data (trackers, bounded history, Logger Rate Limiter), Intervals and scheduling (Meeting Rooms II), Geometry and simulation (Max Points on a Line, robot navigation), Strings and tries (Expressive Words, Custom Sort String, prefix search), Dynamic programming, Domain-flavored system design (fleet data, simulation, caching), C++ for onboard roles

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

What they ask (data)¶

Based on 10 distinct problems tagged to Waymo in the last 6 months (0 in the last 30 days, 6 in the last 3 months, 29 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): Hard 50%, Medium 40%, Easy 10%

Most tagged topics (share of problems): Array 80%, Breadth-First Search 40%, Depth-First Search 30%, Matrix 30%, Union-Find 20%, Dynamic Programming 20%, Heap (Priority Queue) 20%, Binary Search 20%, String 20%, Greedy 10%

Watch out: Waymo has thin LeetCode data. Weight the reported questions and the format notes above more than this list.

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	Number of Islands	Medium	3 months	Array, Depth-First Search, Breadth-First Search, Union-Find
2	Minimum Number of Refueling Stops	Hard	3 months	Array, Dynamic Programming, Greedy, Heap (Priority Queue)
3	Logger Rate Limiter	Easy	3 months	Hash Table, Design, Data Stream
4	Random Pick with Weight	Medium	3 months	Array, Math, Binary Search, Prefix Sum
5	Shortest Distance from All Buildings	Hard	3 months	Array, Breadth-First Search, Matrix
6	Maximum Gap	Medium	3 months	Array, Sorting, Bucket Sort, Radix Sort
7	Number of Visible People in a Queue	Hard	6 months	Array, Stack, Monotonic Stack
8	Alien Dictionary	Hard	6 months	Array, String, Depth-First Search, Breadth-First Search
9	Path With Minimum Effort	Medium	6 months	Array, Binary Search, Depth-First Search, Breadth-First Search
10	Regular Expression Matching	Hard	6 months	String, Dynamic Programming, Recursion

Signature problems¶

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

#	Problem	Difficulty	Last seen	Topics
1	Shortest Distance from All Buildings	Hard	3 months	Array, Breadth-First Search, Matrix
2	Maximum Gap	Medium	3 months	Array, Sorting, Bucket Sort, Radix Sort
3	Number of Visible People in a Queue	Hard	6 months	Array, Stack, Monotonic Stack

Reported in 2025 to 2026 interviews¶

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

Question	Role	When	Source
Progressive coding: partition a bag of integers into groups of identical values, then into groups of exactly 5 consecutive integers	Software Engineer, Fleet Response, coding round 1	2026-04	post
Same problem, final part: groups of 3 or more consecutive integers	Software Engineer, Fleet Response, coding round 1	2026-04	post
JavaScript/UI: build a generic tree viewer component for hierarchical data (file explorer), expand/collapse, stopPropagation vs event delegation	Software Engineer, Fleet Response, JS/UI round	2026-04	post
Car position tracker: record positions per car, return most recent positions, then keep only a fixed max history per car (List vs Deque)	Software Engineer, Fleet Response, DSA round	2026-04	post
Number of Islands variant: compute the boundary with the water	Software Engineer, phone screen (passed; rejected after 4-round virtual onsite)	2026-04	post
Two perception systems track objects with separate IDs: given ID links and observations, return merged histories sorted by time, looked up by an ID from either side (ObjectTracker class with addLink and addObservation; also reported in a May 2026 onsite)	Software Engineer, onsite coding	2026-04	post
System design: a fleet of vehicles that collects map data for autonomous driving	Software Engineer, onsite system design	2026-04	post
System design: matchmaking service (join queue, cancel, match compatible players, notify, handle disconnects and expiry)	Software Engineer, onsite system design	2026-05	post
System design: global caching service for small images backed by a single database, hundreds of thousands of RPS, updates and invalidation	Software Engineer, onsite system design	2026-05	post
Robot moves in four directions, must return to its starting point and avoid obstacles	Software Engineer, phone screen	2026-06	post
Find dictionary words represented by input with repeated (stretched) letters	Software Engineer, onsite coding	2026-06	post
Vehicle must cross a map with obstacles and refuel points with limited fuel, using a controller that stores only 10 commands and repeats them	Software Engineer, onsite coding	2026-06	post
Shortest Distance from All Buildings (LC 317), then a DFS graph problem with a proof of correctness	Software Engineer, onsite coding	2026-08	post
System design: a simulation system for the simulation team	Software Engineer, onsite system design	2026-08	post
Generate one command sequence that guides a blind robot to the exit from any start cell in a 2D maze (robot stays put when hitting walls)	Machine Learning Engineer, onsite DSA round	2026-01	post
Dynamic programming question with follow-ups	Software Engineer (US), technical round	2025-05	post
Decide if a vehicle is ready to go from open/end maintenance events (one open task per type, every end matches an open)	Software Engineer, technical screen	2026-09	post
Sort a string's characters by a given character order (others keep relative order at the end)	Software Engineer, onsite	2026-09	post
Insert +, -, * and parentheses between ordered numbers to reach a target; return lexicographically smallest canonical expression	Software Engineer, onsite	2026-09	post
Preprocess a word list, then for each prefix query return all distinct matching words in lexicographic order (trie)	Machine Learning Engineer, onsite (PracHub tags the role New Grad on its listing)	2026-09	post
Coding: second problem was a graph traversal with DFS, with a follow-up to prove the answer is correct; behavioral: a project you are proud of, handling priorities	Software Engineer (Simulation team), onsite	2026-08	post

Beyond LeetCode¶

JavaScript/UI component round (generic tree viewer like a file explorer: recursive rendering, expand/collapse, event delegation); ML coding (numpy trajectory manipulation, softmax cross-entropy forward and backward); ML system design (driving scene retrieval); ML intern 'Data Fluency' round; domain knowledge round for some roles (stopping distance, trajectory prediction, geometry) per PracHub guide; HM scenario-based debugging.

System design¶

Appears in SWE onsites, including non-senior loops (2025 and 2026 reports). Flavors are domain-specific: design a system for a vehicle fleet to collect map data; design a simulation system to evaluate a driving model on limited compute; matchmaking service with join, cancel, notify, expiry; global cache for small images. One candidate was told simulation knowledge would not be tested and then got a simulation design round. Interns: none reported.

Start with who needs system design, then the framework.

Behavioral¶

Framework: Waymo values: Advance Safely, Honor Diversity, Innovate Always, Deliver Excellence, Earn Trust (official page)

What they look for:

Examples of dealing with ambiguity, complexity, prioritization and gaining alignment across a matrixed organization (official tip)
Safety-first judgment
Relentless drive combined with kind collaboration and humility (culture section)
Production ownership: on-call, reliability, observability
Clear reasons for 'why Waymo'

Questions to prepare:

Tell me about a conflict and how you resolved it
How do you handle feedback?
Describe your on-call experience
Describe a project you are proud of
How do you handle competing priorities?
Why Waymo?
How do you use GenAI tools in your day-to-day work?
Walk me through how you would investigate unexpected system behavior with limited information

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

Tips¶

Do not use AI tools in any live interview or assessment; Waymo's how-we-hire page bans it unless instructions say otherwise.
Ask clarifying questions before coding; Waymo says many questions are deliberately general and interviewers want you to avoid wrong assumptions.
Practice the Waymo-tagged LeetCode set: Number of Islands, Logger Rate Limiter, Random Pick with Weight, Minimum Number of Refueling Stops, Shortest Distance from All Buildings, Max Points on a Line, Meeting Rooms II.
Practice progressive problems: solve the base case cleanly, then adapt when constraints change (groups of identical values, then 5 consecutive, then 3 or more).
Rehearse autonomy-flavored class design: object tracking across two ID systems, per-car position history with a deque, maintenance event validation.
Prepare stories on ambiguity, prioritization and cross-team alignment, plus a real answer to 'why Waymo' that mentions safety.
For internships, apply individually to your top 3 roles only and check whether the posting is BS, MS or PhD track.
If you target onboard or systems teams, review C++ memory management and concurrency.

4-week plan for Waymo¶

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 Waymo values: Advance Safely, Honor Diversity, Innovate Always, Deliver Excellence, Earn Trust round. Do 2 full mock loops. Review the online assessment and system design notes above.

Sources¶

Watch out: careers.withwaymo.com pages returned HTTP 200 with full content on Oct 4, 2026 (an earlier pass saw a bot challenge and used Wayback snapshots); the explicit no-AI policy is on the live how-we-hire page. Intern-specific loops are thin in free sources: the official flow (recruiter, 1 to 2 interviews) is the best guide. Post-onsite team matching is not documented: the PracHub guide only says questions vary by team (Planner, Perception, ML Platform, Fleet Infrastructure), so the earlier team-matching stage was removed; whether Waymo uses a Google-style hiring committee was not confirmed, so it is omitted. Most 2026 question reports do not state level; treat them as general SWE (L3 to L4). PracHub question pages are aggregated reports with a report date, not first-hand posts. The Waymo Greenhouse job pages redirect to careers.withwaymo.com/jobs?gh_jid=; the Greenhouse API URLs in sources are the verifiable form. Company-tagged LeetCode lists (liquidslr, snehasishroy) are frequency data, not dated reports. Glassdoor and Reddit could not be fetched (403) and are not cited. Verification (Oct 4, 2026): every URL in sources was fetched and confirmed [VERIFIED]; LeetCode Discuss posts were read through LeetCode GraphQL API because their HTML returns 403 to scripts. Source notes: https://careers.withwaymo.com/how-we-hire (live, Oct 4, 2026: no-AI policy, 1 to 2 phone/video interviews, up to 5 onsite interviewers at about 45 min, interview tips); https://careers.withwaymo.com/working-at-waymo (live: five values); https://careers.withwaymo.com/early-careers (live: interns hosted onsite in a hybrid modality); https://careers.withwaymo.com/ (live); https://boards-api.greenhouse.io/v1/boards/waymo/jobs/8198218 (2027 Summer Intern BS/MS SWE Commercialization, USD 60 BS / 70 MS, apply to top 3); https://boards-api.greenhouse.io/v1/boards/waymo/jobs/8224729 (2027 Summer Intern MS/PhD Software Engineer); https://boards-api.greenhouse.io/v1/boards/waymo/jobs/8224900 (2027 Summer Intern BS Software Engineer, Driver Refinement Foundations); https://boards-api.greenhouse.io/v1/boards/waymo/jobs/8227640 (2027 Summer Intern PhD Software Engineer, Simulation); https://boards-api.greenhouse.io/v1/boards/waymo/jobs (366 postings on Oct 4, 2026); https://www.aced.io/blog/waymo-interview-process (Aced, formerly Exponent); https://www.1point3acres.com/interview/company/waymo (thread titles only, details gated; curl gets HTTP 403, titles read with WebFetch on Oct 4, 2026); https://github.com/liquidslr/leetcode-company-wise-problems/tree/main/Waymo (repo 31,048 stars, last push 2026-08-16); https://github.com/snehasishroy/leetcode-companywise-interview-questions/tree/master/waymo (repo 8,233 stars, last push 2026-08-21). Fact-check pass (Oct 4, 2026): all URLs re-fetched (HTTP 200 except 1point3acres, read via WebFetch; LeetCode posts and problem slugs re-checked through the GraphQL API; waymo.com/company now redirects to waymo.com/about). Corrected: removed the unsupported 'team matching after onsite' stage; the robot navigation question was a phone screen; vesting wording; added London and Warsaw intern locations and the repeat ObjectTracker problem. Process cross-checked against the official how-we-hire page, the PracHub 2026 guide, Aced, Taro (May 2025) and the Apr 2026 LeetCode Discuss Fleet Response report.

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