Airbnb Software Engineer interview questions

I applied through a recruiter, who promptly scheduled a phone screening - the general talk about personal things. They then quickly scheduled another phone screening, this time with an engineer to test my coding ability (it took about a week between the initial screening and the technical interview). They asked me to code a csv parser in the 45 minutes of allotted time and get it to compile and run correctly. For this reason I chose python (java takes too long to get the peripheral framework ready to run). I would practice getting code to compile and run in about 35 minutes because it takes about 10 minutes to understand their question in detail.

After the initial housekeeping with recruiters you do 2 phone screens that last ~45 minutes. Coding questions are the average DS and algo, but wrapped in some use scenario context, which is helpful. Mine included: lower/uppercase permutations, simple json parsing, implementing a simple socket based client (could lookup docs online). You need to produce *running code (this is true for both phone and onsite), but that shouldn't make you nervous. Arch/Design questions is what got me. You're expected to know database/relation design, indexing, different layers of caching and lookup optimization as if you do this all day every day. You can answer these Q's in either Sql or NoSql context. Then there are 2 quirky culture/fit interviews. Know why you want to work there, be ready to share some experiences from traveling (and hopefully using AirBnB), and have something new to teach your interviewer in a few minutes. That part is actually fun. All in all a nice experience and anyone you interact with are pleasant and helpful.