Frontend Engineer · Phone Screen · Coding

Apple — Frontend Engineer ❌ Failed

Level: Senior-Level

Round: Phone Screen · Type: Coding · Difficulty: 6/10 · Duration: 60 min · Interviewer: Neutral

Topics: Arrays, Sorting, Time Complexity, Space Complexity

Location: San Francisco Bay Area

Interview date: 2026-01-15

Got offer: False

Summary

Phone Screen

Question: After some behavioral questions about my proudest project and most challenging moment, I was asked to solve a coding problem involving array manipulation.

Details

The coding question I got was:

You have an array of integers with about 75 elements. The data may not be sorted, and there could be duplicates. Your job is to zero out the duplicate elements and sort the data, keeping time and space complexity in mind. Try not to use any native sorting algorithm such as sort,.sort, quicksort,.quicksort or bubblesort.

My approach:

1. I would first iterate through the array and use a hash map (or set) to identify duplicate elements.
2. Then, I would zero out the duplicate elements.
3. Finally, I would implement a sorting algorithm like merge sort or heap sort to sort the remaining non-duplicate elements, as these algorithms have better time complexity compared to bubble sort or insertion sort.

Key insights:

• Understanding the trade-offs between different sorting algorithms is important for optimizing performance.
• Using appropriate data structures like hash maps can help efficiently identify duplicate elements.