Google Software Engineer Interview Questions
6 real practice questions for the mid-level Software Engineer role at Google (Technology), spanning behavioral, technical, and problem solving. Design, develop, and maintain software applications. The first 3 questions below include what Google interviewers actually listen for, plus likely follow-ups.
- Questions
- 6
- Categories
- Behavioral (2), Technical (3), Problem Solving (1)
- Difficulty mix
- 4 medium · 2 hard
- Avg. answer time
- ~3 min
Behavioral Questions (2)
1.Tell me about a time when you had to push back on a decision you disagreed with. How did you handle it?
medium~3 minWhat interviewers look for
- Respectfully challenged with data and reasoning
- Committed fully once decision was made
- Maintained positive relationships
- Shows intellectual humility if proven wrong
- Learned from the experience
Likely follow-ups
- What would you have done if you were overruled?
- How do you know when to keep pushing vs accepting a decision?
Company context
At Google, we value Googliness - people who challenge ideas respectfully and commit fully once a direction is chosen.
2.Describe a project where you had to collaborate with people from different teams or disciplines. How did you make it successful?
medium~3 minWhat interviewers look for
- Shows effective cross-functional communication
- Demonstrates ability to understand different perspectives
- Proactively resolved conflicts or misalignments
- Achieved measurable positive outcome
- Built lasting relationships across teams
Likely follow-ups
- What was the biggest challenge in the collaboration?
- How did you handle disagreements between teams?
Technical Questions (3)
3.Given a binary tree, find the lowest common ancestor of two nodes. Explain your approach.
medium~3 minWhat interviewers look for
- Understands the problem correctly (LCA definition)
- Proposes recursive solution with correct logic
- Handles edge cases (node not in tree, same node)
- Analyzes time and space complexity
- Discusses optimization for BST case
Likely follow-ups
- What if the tree is a Binary Search Tree?
- What if you need to answer many LCA queries for the same tree?
4.Design an autocomplete system for Google Search. What data structures and algorithms would you use?
hard~4 min5.How would you design a web crawler that can index billions of web pages?
hard~4 min
Problem Solving Questions (1)
6.You have a dataset with millions of records and need to find the most frequent elements. What approaches would you consider?
medium~3 min