I applied online. The process took 2 months. I interviewed at Google (Mountain View, CA) in Jun 2012
Interview
Google has a long process. I've interviewed with them several times before, the occasionally refresh their past candidates and call them back. The last time i spoke to them was about 3 years ago. The recruiter emailed me and asked to chat with me again, thru this process they explained the phone interviews that would be done, the skills assessment/packet preparation, then the onsite panel interview. Then the panel participants submit written feedback to a committee who makes the decision. You never speak to the people making the decision, sometimes this causes a loss of fidelity between who is being spoken to and who is making the decision. I don't care for the in-personal approach of never talking to the decision maker, but google is reported to be a good employer.
Interview questions [5]
Question 1
This wasn't difficult, but it was an important question: They wanted the name of a google employee i knew or worked with. If you know someone or worked with the, ahead of the interview have their email or full name all worked out as well as to be sure they will vouch for you.
Describe on a scale of 1 to 10 your familiarity with systems administration. Followup: which system call returns inode information? What signal does the "kill" command send by default ? How many IP addresses are usable on a /23 network. Can you describe a connection setup in TCP
Describe your familiarity on a scale of 1 to 10 familiarity with Algorithms and Data Structures? Describe on a scale of 1 to 10 each of these: C, C++, Python, Java, Perl, and Shell Scripting, MySQL.
HR round after applying, then coding screening round, if passes, then final round which consists of four coding round or three coding and one design round. Problem difficulty medium to hard.
I applied online. I interviewed at Google (Zürich) in Mar 2026
Interview
Frist had one roughly 20 to 30 minutes screening call with a recruiter, then had one online 45 minutes technical interview with a Google Site Reliability Engineer. The technical interview covered data structure and algorithm topics.
I applied online. I interviewed at Google (Dublin, Dublin) in Mar 2026
Interview
The interview lasted 45 minutes and was conducted one-on-one. I was required to walk through my thought process before coding and then implement an optimized solution with a focus on time complexity.
