Linkedin Software Engineer Interview

The first stage of the LinkedIn Software Engineer Interview process typically involves a 15-minute phone call with a recruiter. It serves as an opportunity for the recruiter to learn more about your professional background, experiences, and any notable projects you've worked on. 

If you ask them, they'll also give you the low-down on the interview process, like what to expect in the next rounds and any helpful resources to prepare.

The recruiter screen is straight-forward enough and you should be able to clear it with a bit of prep.

This interview is quite similar to the one which occurs for the Zomato SWE interview and the Uber SWE interview.

The technical phone interview for LinkedIn Software Engineer roles usually happens over a video call, often using tools like Coderpad or Collabedit. From what candidates share and based on SWEs at LinkedIn, this second screening involves chatting about basic data structures and tackling medium-level coding problems, similar to what you'd find on Leetcode.

Here are two tips for this round:

1. You'll typically interact with two interviewers who'll spend a few minutes discussing your experience and projects before diving into coding questions. They'll cover stuff like arrays, lists, strings, stacks, search and sorting algorithms, queues, and maybe touch on more advanced topics like graphs and dynamic programming. Make sure to spend time practicing coding problems on platforms like Leetcode, HackerRank, or CodeSignal. 
2. Next, make sure you effectively communicate your thought process and problem-solving approach. Our best advice is to either find a friend or colleague to conduct mock interviews with you or use an online platform like Prepfully that offers interview prep services.

The onsite round can be quite intensive and comprehensive. There are typically 5-6 rounds, lasting  45 minutes to one hour each. However, some candidates have faced up to 7 rounds (most of which are coding-based), so it can vary.

• 2 Coding Rounds
• 1 System Design Round
• 1 Behavioral/Cultural Session
• 1 Technical Communications Round
• 1 Team Collaboration Interview

Each round starts with a 10-minute intro chat, and the last 5 minutes are for any questions you have for the interviewer.

1. Technical/Coding Interviews

In these rounds, you'll usually face two coding questions. One will be of medium difficulty, and the other will be harder, and you'll have about 40 minutes to crack both.

These coding rounds are a lot like the technical screen. They want to see how you approach problems and explain your thinking. Here are 2 tips to prep for coding rounds:

• Make sure you're well-versed with concepts like Graphs, Stacks, Queues, Lists, Sets, Arrays, Hash maps, and Heaps. This also includes Linked lists, Recursion, and Search and Sort algorithms.
• Practice coding on platforms like LeetCode and HackerRank. Focus on tackling medium to hard-level questions, especially those covering algorithms, data structures, and object-oriented concepts.
  
• 2. System Design Round

In the System Design round, they'll assess your skills in designing systems at scale. You'll need to create a high-level design for a product, for instance, Linkedin from scratch, a new recommendation engine, or simply improve an existing product.

How much weight this round carries depends on your experience level and the job you're after (Junior/Senior). If you're going for a junior role, you don't need to be a system design expert, but you should have a good grasp of Product Designing. For senior roles, though, you'll need to be on top of both.

Here's what we suggest you do:

• First, begin by asking questions to clarify what's needed; this will help you figure out an optimal solution.
• Then, use a virtual whiteboard tool to draw out your solution and do any math you need.
• Make sure to nail down a strong, big-picture design within the first 30 minutes, and explain your thinking clearly as you go.
• Finally, talk over your design with the interviewer, tweak it based on their feedback, and make sure it meets all the performance requirements.

We'd recommend practicing this interview with a mock interviewer. There are several Linkedin software engineers on Prepfully who provide great practice and guidance on dealing with the twists and turns the system design  interview can take — and you can book a slot with them directly here.

1. Behavioral/Cultural Interview

In the Behavioral/Cultural Interview, you'll chat with the Hiring Manager about your behavior and leadership style. They'll throw different scenarios at you, and you'll explain how you'd handle them. So, for instance, they may ask how you handle disagreement within a team while working on a project. Or if you have even taken the lead on a project or initiative.

This round is their way of figuring out if you'll fit in well with the company's culture.

• In addition to this, there is also a Technical Communications round where you discuss your past projects and interviewers closely analyze your experience for evidence of leadership, team collaboration skills, communication skills (whether you can communicate technical concepts to non-technical teams), etc. Make sure you have examples ready to share of how you've tackled similar situations in the past, how you live up to LinkedIn's values, etc.
• There is also a Team Collaboration interview where they assess how you fit in the company by evaluating your communication skills, teamwork in real-time. It's best to partner with a Linkedin software engineer to find out how this interview might play out. 

Coding

• Implement a LRU (Least Recently Used) cache.
• Given an array of integers, find the maximum subarray sum.
• Implement a priority queue using a heap.
• Design and implement an algorithm to detect a cycle in a directed graph.
• Write a function to check if a binary tree is balanced.
• Implement a trie (prefix tree) data structure.
• Given a string, find the longest substring without repeating characters.
• Divide an array into subarrays with equal sums.

System Design

• Build widgets using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript
• Design a word-guessing game with unique rules
• What's the trade-off between bias and variance?
• Design a scalable chat service like WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger.
• Design a distributed key-value store like Redis.
• Design a content delivery network (CDN) system.
• Design a ride-sharing system like Uber or Lyft.
• Design a social media platform like Twitter or Instagram.
• Design a scalable recommendation system for e-commerce websites.
• Design a fault-tolerant distributed file system.
• Tell me about a time when you had to work under pressure to meet a tight deadline. How did you handle it?
• Describe a situation where you had to resolve a conflict within your team

Behavioural

• Why Linkedin?
• Tell me about a time when you had to work under pressure to meet a tight deadline. How did you handle it?
• Describe a situation where you had to resolve a conflict within your team