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Level: Senior-Level
Round: Full Journey · Type: Multiple Types · Difficulty: 7/10 · Duration: 240 min · Interviewer: Unfriendly
Topics: Coding, Behavioral Questions, Backtracking, Depth-First Search, System Design, Payment Systems
Location: Seattle, WA, US
Interview date: 2026-01-31
Got offer: False
This describes my interview experience for a Software Engineer role at Expedia. I applied online in January-March 2026.
Round 1 (Coding): I was asked to solve LeetCode 38 in 20 minutes. Then, I was asked a question about scattered palindromes. The question was to calculate, given a list of strings, how many substrings in each string could become palindromes through swapping. For example, 'aabb' has 9 such substrings.
Round 2 (Hiring Manager): I spoke with a hiring manager. I learned that his team was full, but other teams might use this interview to hire. The interviewer's English was not strong, and he paused for 4-5 seconds to read a translation of my answers. One question that stood out was, 'Tell me about a time when you didn't trust your colleague.'
Round 3 (Coding): I was interviewed by another interviewer. The question was to find all possible strings from a string like '08??840' where each '?' can be at most 8, and the sum of the digits must be 24. For example, "0804840", "0813840", "082240", "084040" are possible results. This could be solved using backtracking/DFS, but I did not complete it successfully due to time constraints.
Round 4 (System Design): The question was related to payment systems, which I found overwhelming. Knowing I wasn't going to pass, I answered casually and moved on.
LeetCode similar: LeetCode 38