Google SDE Intern Interview - Summer 2026
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Background: 3rd year CS undergrad, applied through campus placement + referral.

  • Applied: mid-July
  • Result: 5 days after interviews

Round 1 – Online Assessment (90 mins)
Two DSA problems + one MCQ section on CS fundamentals (OS, DBMS, OOP).

  1. Medium — Given an array, find the length of the longest subarray with sum ≤ k. (Sliding window)
  2. Medium-Hard — Given a binary tree, return the maximum sum path between any two leaf nodes.

Both had partial test cases visible; passed 9/10 on Q1, 7/9 on Q2 (missed an edge case with negative sums).

Round 2 – Technical Interview (45 mins)
Started with a quick intro, then moved to problem solving.

  • Problem: "Design a data structure that supports insert, delete, and getRandom in O(1)."
    • I started with a hashmap + array approach, explained the swap-and-pop trick for O(1) deletion.
    • Interviewer asked a follow-up: "What if duplicates are allowed?" — had to extend with a hashmap of sets storing indices.
  • Discussed time/space complexity, then a couple of quick CS fundamentals questions (process vs thread, indexing in SQL).

Round 3 – Technical + Project Discussion (45 mins)

  • Deep dive into a project from my resume (a URL shortener). Asked about database schema, how I handled collisions in hash generation, and how I'd scale it to handle millions of requests/day.
  • Coding question: "Detect a cycle in a linked list and return the starting node." Solved with Floyd's cycle detection, then explained the math behind why the meeting point works.
  • Ended with "Do you have questions for me?" — I asked about team structure and what a typical intern project looks like.

Round 4 – HR/Behavioral (20 mins)
Standard questions: why this company, strengths/weaknesses, how I handle conflict in team projects, and a hypothetical about tight deadlines.

Verdict: Selected 🎉

Tips for others:

  • Practice sliding window, two pointers, and tree/graph traversal thoroughly — these came up repeatedly.
  • Be ready to justify time/space tradeoffs out loud, not just code silently.
  • Know your resume projects at a system-design level, not just "what" you built but "why" you made each choice.
  • For behavioral rounds, keep answers structured (situation → action → result).
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