Meta | E5 | MLE | Passed | Menlo Park

I am sharing my interview experience, hoping it will be helpful to others. This was my first coding interview.

Background Years of Experience: 7 years as a Machine Learning Engineer I was contacted by HR and scheduled a phone interview. I then began practicing problems.

Preparation Approach Coding I started with NeetCode's roadmap, the top 150 tagged questions, and recent interview questions.

ML System Design I read "Machine Learning System Design Interview" by Ali Aminian and Alex Xu twice. I also used ChatGPT to deepen my understanding of various ML topics.

Behavioral I researched common behavioral questions and prepared detailed answers.

Interview Timeline

1. Contacted by HR in mid-June
2. Phone screen in mid-July, passed the next day.
3. Onsite interview in mid-August, received a positive response five business days later.

Phone Interview

1. Binary Tree Vertical Order Traversal
2. Minimum Remove to Make Valid Parentheses

I solved both questions within 40 minutes. The interviewer noted that my solution to the second question wasn't optimal, but I was able to improve it during the interview.

Coding Interview 1

1. Sum Root to Leaf Numbers (a slight variation of the standard problem). Solved optimally in 10 minutes.
2. Meeting Rooms II (a slight variation). I needed a hint to recognize it as a meeting rooms problem and struggled slightly with returning the timestamp instead of the overlap number. My solution worked, but it wasn't elegant. Solved in approximately 30 minutes.

Coding Interview 2

1. Minimum Cost Flight (similar to a problem discussed on ). Solved optimally in 5 minutes.
2. Shortest Path in Binary Matrix. Solved optimally in 15 minutes.

The interviewer asked a follow-up question about a weighted matrix. I used dynamic programming instead of BFS + Heap, and my solution had some uncovered corner cases. However, the discussion was productive, and I was able to clearly explain my approach.

ML System Design The design problem involved harmful content detection. I followed a structured approach, adapting it to the interviewer's specific questions. We covered all components and extended questions within 40 minutes. It's important to be flexible and adjust your approach based on the interviewer's focus.

Behavioral I answered six to seven behavioral questions. The interviewer delved into details, and we finished within 40 minutes.

Notes

1. Practice using CoderPad. Explain your thought process thoroughly before coding.
2. If you're a beginner, don't be discouraged if you can't solve a problem immediately. Use resources like NeetCode or ChatGPT.
3. For Meta, coding speed and optimal solutions are important. Use ChatGPT to optimize your code.
4. Luck plays a role, but preparation is key. Good luck!