I applied through a recruiter. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Meta (Menlo Park, CA) in Apr 2025
Interview
Recruiters were nice and available for questions. Fairly good preparation material but obviously, not enough to be fully prepared, I had no expectation about the job as they found my resume online.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Two coding interviews, a mix for hard and medium Leetcode questions. Definitely some gatekeeping here, one of the interviewer started with a hard question.
Product Architure : design a translation system for Meta apps, design an auction system like eBay.
I applied through college or university. I interviewed at Meta (San Mateo, CA)
Interview
Coding / Technical Rounds: Solving practical coding or domain-specific exercises.System
Design: Architects a scalable system, focusing on handling trade-offs, scaling limits, and complete end-to-end solutions.
Behavioral: Focused on cultural fit, your ability to navigate ambiguity, and how you collaborate cross-functionally with engineers, designers, and product managers.
Typical Interview rounds.
Coding - Leetcode Medium
AI Coding - 4 parts to it.
System design - 1 high level(Like implement messenger) and 1 low level (eg: implement scheduler)
Behavioural - STAR based Questions and answers.
I didnt complete AI 4 parts, thats why i got rejected i guess.
Pretty efficient. Scheduled it very quickly, screens followed by an in person interview. You have Ninjas, Pirates, and Jedis, technical, systems design, and personality interviews respectively. Scheduling is good, good hotel and flights and everything.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Design the Facebook post privacy functionality. In other words, if I make a Facebook post, and I have 3 privacy options to choose from (Only Me, Friends Only, Public), design how wold you get the visibility for any Faceook user (ie. can a FB user see the post or not)
Staff Software Engineer applicants have rated the interview process at Meta with 3.3 out of 5 (where 5 is the highest level of difficulty) and assessed their interview experience as 61% positive. To compare, the company-average is 56.5% positive. This is according to Glassdoor user ratings.
Candidates applying for Staff Software Engineer roles take an average of 61 days to get hired, when considering 18 user submitted interviews for this role. To compare, the hiring process at Meta overall takes an average of 31 days.
Common stages of the interview process at Meta as a Staff Software Engineer according to 18 Glassdoor interviews include:
One on one interview: 29%
Phone interview: 23%
Skills test: 13%
Presentation: 10%
Background check: 6%
Other: 6%
Personality test: 6%
Group panel interview: 3%
IQ intelligence test: 3%
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