Pretty standard engineering interview. Recruiter call, technical interview, system design. They also had a code review interview that I had never seen before. I thought it was a little trickier than average, but not horrible. Sucks that if you don't move to the next round you can't reapply for a year.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Tell me about the tech stack you've worked with before
I have my friend refer me to the recruiter. The interview scheduling process and recruiter is very nice. And they gave lots of useful materials for preparing the interview.
The onsite contains 2 codings, 2 architect, 2 cross function and 1 experience. The coding question has high requirement, and you need to come out runnable result in 45 minutes. The cross function are also an important part of airbnb interview, ask you why choose this company.
I failed in both architect part. There are 2 system design questions, which had been well known in glassdoor and been well prepared by me. But I got 2 negative response in those rounds.
The first question is to design translating system, I think I come out design with interviewers requirements, and looks like interviewer is satisfied. The other question is key-value cache design. I think the round the interviewer is not satisfied. He was trying to dig deep and figure out if I have a overall and detailed knowledge on the system. While what make me struggle is it's hard to get what he is asking, and I feel he is not satisfied with my answers. I may need to thing more about the system design interview expectations after this failures.
Overall, I think the interview process itself is good, and the recruiter is much more friendly than Amazon recruiter.
I applied online. The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Airbnb (San Francisco, CA) in Apr 2026
Interview
Submitted my application and the next day i received the coding assessment I did not speak to anyone it was all done online, Im still waiting to hear back on my results
I applied online. I interviewed at Airbnb in Mar 2026
Interview
Had hiring manager call but got reject after the interview. The interview was around my past experience in the current company. Talked about how I influence roadmap, handle escalations and architect team’s initiatives,