Software Engineer · Phone Screen · Coding

Netflix — Software Engineer ✅ Passed

Level: Mid-Level

Round: Phone Screen · Type: Coding · Difficulty: 3/10 · Duration: 60 min · Interviewer: Unfriendly

Topics: Sliding Window, Deduplication, Frontend, Backend, Testing

Location: Los Gatos, CA

Interview date: 2025-08-15

Summary

I was contacted by HR after attending a Netflix recruiting event for an L4 position. The interviewer interrupted me frequently during the coding challenge.

Question: The coding question was a sliding window problem.

Question: The problem solving question involved deduplication on the Netflix home page. I wrote the dedupe code and then discussed the implementation, such as whether it should be on the front end or back end, how to test it, and what to do if there are not enough items after deduplication.

Details

The coding question involved implementing a sliding window algorithm. The interviewer interrupted me at every line. I struggled, but I finished writing and testing the code.

For the second question, I implemented deduplication logic for the Netflix home page. We discussed implementation details, including:

• Should this be implemented on the front end or back end?
• How should this be tested?
• What if there are not enough items after deduplication?