Software Engineer · Onsite · Multiple Types

Meta — Software Engineer ❌ Failed

Level: Senior-Level

Round: Onsite · Type: Multiple Types · Difficulty: 6/10 · Duration: 240 min · Interviewer: Neutral

Topics: Behavioral Questions, Arrays, Dynamic Programming, System Design, Time Complexity, Space Complexity

Location: San Francisco Bay Area

Interview date: 2026-01-15

Got offer: False

Summary

Interview Rounds Overview

• Round 1: Behavioral (BQ)
• Round 2: Coding
• Round 3: AI Coding
• Round 4: System Design

Details

I had an onsite interview. Here's how it went:

Round 1: Behavioral

I was asked standard behavioral questions common at the company.

Round 2: Coding

• Part 1: I was given a one-dimensional array containing only 0s and 1s. I needed to write a method to quickly retrieve the number of 1s within a given range of indices. I was not allowed to modify the array, and the array could be very large.
• Part 2: The problem was changed to a two-dimensional array.

Round 3: AI Coding

A new question was presented. I was given a list of words and asked to identify words that contained other words. For example, [category, cat] should return category. The solver was already implemented.

• Part 1: I needed to analyze the time and space complexity of the existing code without using AI.
• Part 2: I had to provide an optimization plan, including the expected time and space complexity (again, without AI initially), and then implement the optimized solution, at which point I was allowed to use AI.

Round 4: System Design

I was asked to design Ticketmaster.