I applied through a recruiter. I interviewed at Booking.com
Interview
The interview process is simple and same as described by other people. I'd like to add a couple of things to this -
- Recruiter was very polite and helpful in my case.
- Strong emphasis on justifying your algo/system design choices with numbers/experience/rational reason.
- Interviewers do give hints if you're not going in the right direction but if you fail to catch them and correct your solution, that shows rigid mentality and it's a big negative sign.
- Bonus points for being proactive in finding edge cases and bugs in your code/design and correcting them.
- In no interview did I feel like I was being interviewed. They all felt like discussions between colleagues.
Interview questions [2]
Question 1
Straightforward algorithm question followed with discussions on scaling and how to productionize it
apply online and then got an interview opportunity with the hackerrank test, after thet an hr call and then two rounds of tech interviews, after that there is a beharviour interview
I applied through a staffing agency. I interviewed at Booking.com (Amsterdam) in Jun 2026
Interview
Two stages:
- Technical: consisted of two parts. The first one was a hands-on coding exercise where I had to solve a problem, and the second one was focused on system design.
- Culture fit
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
They asked about idempotency, retry mechanisms, inter-process communication, observability, reliability, and scalability.
I applied through a recruiter. I interviewed at Booking.com
Interview
I recently interviewed with Booking.com for a software engineer role. The process was well-organized and took about 3–4 weeks. It started with an online assessment on HackerRank with a couple of LeetCode medium problems. That was followed by a technical screen where I did live coding and discussed basic algorithms. The final round was a full day of back-to-back sessions: algorithmic coding, system design (something like designing a hotel availability checker), a behavioral round using STAR questions, and a chat with a manager about company values. The interviewers were professional and friendly, and the problems felt relevant to Booking's actual business. On the downside, some coding rounds felt repetitive, and I didn't get much feedback after being rejected. Overall, it was a fair but challenging process. My advice: practice medium-level array and hash map problems, review basic system design, and have solid STAR stories ready. I'd rate it 4 out of 5 stars and would recommend it to other engineers.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Design a hotel search and availability system that returns available rooms for a given date range and can handle high traffic.