I applied online. The process took 6 weeks. I interviewed at TikTok (Seattle, WA) in Dec 2024
Interview
Round 1 & 2
The interview process begins with a 30-minute deep dive into the candidate's resume, during which the interviewer closely examines their experience, skills, and achievements to assess suitability for the role. This is followed by a 15-minute coding session where the candidate is required to write code in the company's integrated development environment (IDE). The objective is to ensure the code compiles successfully and passes all the provided test cases, demonstrating the candidate's technical proficiency and problem-solving skills.
Round 3
HM round. Deep dive of resume.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Round 1, similar to Leetcode 210.
Round 2, a binary search question.
Tackling the coding round was intense, kicking off with a question about counting distinct island shapes in a grid. The second challenge involved maximizing a sum without using adjacent elements, which really tested my problem-solving skills. About two minutes in, it hit me — this was a problem I had practiced on prachub.com just days before. The final question required implementing stacks and calculating the streaming median. After the technical rounds and a brief behavioral interview, I received an offer, which I happily accepted.
I applied through a recruiter. I interviewed at TikTok
Interview
- recruiter asked me to speak in Chinese for latter half of screen
- 1st round was algo interview
- 2nd round was algo and system design
- didn't move forward after second round
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
- 1st round was simple 1D dp problem
- 2nd round was graph problem (Djikstra's) and ML system design
2 rounds coding a lot of background questions very strange behavior from interviewer camera was off and asked questions in mandarin, leetcode medium-hard and very very slow communication from recruiters based in asia for an english role