Airbnb interview questions

12 coding problems in the Placed library have been reported in Airbnb software engineering interviews, along with 7 behavioral questions. Every one can be run as a timed mock interview with a voice interviewer and a scored report.

0
Easy
3
Medium
9
Hard

Patterns that come up most

  • Graph3
  • Intervals1
  • Hashing1
  • Trie1
  • Greedy1

Problems to start with

That is 6 of 12. Pro adds a company filter to the full library. See pricing.

Behavioral questions

  • Ownership & Initiative

    Tell me about a time you inherited a codebase, process, or product in bad shape. How did you decide what was worth fixing versus tolerating? What concrete improvements did you drive, and how did you measure progress?

  • Dealing with Ambiguity

    Describe a project where the requirements kept shifting. How did you stay effective without losing time to churn? How did you communicate progress when the target was moving?

  • Collaboration & Influence

    Describe a time you wrote something — a doc, an RFC, a comment thread — that changed the direction of a project. What made it persuasive? How do you approach writing when the goal is decision-making rather than information sharing?

  • Conflict & Disagreement

    Describe a time you had to push back on a stakeholder's request because it was the wrong thing to build. How did you frame the pushback? Did you find a version of the idea that was worth doing, and how did the relationship survive?

  • Impact & Outcomes

    Tell me about a time you made a small change that had a disproportionately large impact. How did you spot the opportunity? What was the ratio of effort to result, and how do you hunt for those kinds of wins?

  • Self-Awareness & Growth

    Describe your biggest current weakness as an engineer — not a diplomatic one, the real one. What's the concrete evidence? What are you actively doing about it, if anything?

  • Judgment in Context

    Describe a time you said no to a project or feature you could have built. What was the opportunity cost? How did you explain the decision to people who wanted it shipped?

Practice a behavioral round and the interviewer asks follow-ups on your answers.

Company tags come from publicly shared interview reports. They are not confirmed by Airbnb and do not imply affiliation or endorsement.