Software Development Engineer applicants have rated the interview process at TikTok with 3.7 out of 5 (where 5 is the highest level of difficulty) and assessed their interview experience as 50% positive. To compare, the company-average is 37.3% positive. This is according to Glassdoor user ratings.
Candidates applying for Software Development Engineer roles take an average of 32 days to get hired, when considering 6 user submitted interviews for this role. To compare, the hiring process at TikTok overall takes an average of 30 days.
Common stages of the interview process at TikTok as a Software Development Engineer according to 6 Glassdoor interviews include:
Skills test: 33%
One on one interview: 22%
Other: 22%
Background check: 11%
Phone interview: 11%
Here are the most commonly searched roles for interview reports -
Right now I’m talking about the OA process. The questions are all from CodeSignal, and since CodeSignal has a question bank, there’s a high chance you’ll get a problem that has appeared before.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
The first two questions are quite easy, while the last two are more challenging. It really helps if you’ve seen them before. One key difference from LeetCode is that the problems are usually much longer in description, and they rarely test dynamic programming.
The phone screen caught me off guard with its focus on technical knowledge rather than the expected behavioral questions. After that, the loop consisted of heavy coding rounds, where I tackled grid problems and a system design question about content moderation. Surprisingly, I found the linked user records question was similar to patterns I had practiced extensively. All those hours on PracHub definitely paid off when I faced that scenario. In the end, I received an offer, and I accepted without hesitation.
Interview questions [3]
Question 1
Solve two grid problems - number of islands and minimum cost path
I applied through an employee referral. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at TikTok in Jul 2025
Interview
There are four rounds, 3 technical rounds and 1 hiring manager round
1. Coding, 2 questions, medium level
2. Coding, 3 questions, 1 easy, 2 medium
3. System design, easy level
4. Hiring manager round
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
1. One BFS question and one DFS question (combination)
2. 3 consecutive questions, should use sorting and minheap
3. Design a Flink job which is working on sample joiner for 2 streams, one from prediction steam and user action data steam.
4. Questions about resume, project experiences deep dive, asked about ML/AI related projects (I don't hold during professional career)