Senior Software Engineer applicants have rated the interview process at Netflix with 3 out of 5 (where 5 is the highest level of difficulty) and assessed their interview experience as 38% positive. To compare, the company-average is 48.9% positive. This is according to Glassdoor user ratings.
Candidates applying for Senior Software Engineer roles take an average of 17 days to get hired, when considering 107 user submitted interviews for this role. To compare, the hiring process at Netflix overall takes an average of 23 days.
Common stages of the interview process at Netflix as a Senior Software Engineer according to 107 Glassdoor interviews include:
Phone interview: 39%
One on one interview: 30%
Skills test: 12%
Group panel interview: 6%
Personality test: 4%
Presentation: 4%
Background check: 3%
IQ intelligence test: 1%
Other: 0%
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The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Netflix in Sep 2016
Interview
I had three phone rounds and all went well. The first conversation was on the bible (read as Netflix slides deck) with an HR exec and she seemed very little interested in listening to what I was saying. Just going over few things, in a way dragging on the conversation that lasted over 50 minutes. After that I spoke with the hiring manager/director. That was great. Very good interview and conversation. He asked some good tough questions that I answered and over all it went really well. I asked some great (in his words) questions as well. I like the team, manager, works as he described. All good so far. After that I was told there would be another phone interview with a team member. An ex Microsoft employee, then called me for another round of interview on CollabEdit. (2nd collabedit round). I actually did great. My solution was pretty good. We had a good conversation as well. Overall till this point all good and ok.
I got an email two days later saying my background is not what they are looking for at this point and I should be in touch for any other position that can comes up.
I applied online. I interviewed at Netflix in Jun 2026
Interview
Extremely long and involved process. This role had 7 interviews in total with a mix of techincal (coding/systems design) and behavioral (product sense/general). From application to accepting offer took a little over 2 months.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Behavioral mostly focused on "tell me about a time..". Coding was all classic leetcode mediums. Systems design was a standard question.
Seeing the URL shortening service design question caught me off guard at first, but it turned out to be a lucky moment. Just a few days prior, I had practiced a similar architecture problem on PracHub, so I felt somewhat prepared to tackle scalability and data consistency aspects. The process included a recruiter screen, followed by a technical interview focused on system design. Overall, the questions were manageable, but I didn't end up receiving an offer, which was disappointing. The experience taught me a lot, though.
The Netflix interview loop is intense and lives up to its reputation. The recruiters are great, but the technical bar is absolute top tier. After a technical phone screen, the virtual onsite consisted of two deep system design rounds, a practical coding round, and very heavy behavioral rounds focused purely on their Culture Memo. They do not care about how many LeetCode hards you have memorized. They care about how you reason through scale, failure, and ambiguity.