Google AE Interview Experience
Google LLC is an American multinational technology company that focuses on artificial intelligence, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, and consumer electronics. It has been referred to as the “most powerful company in the world” and one of the world’s most valuable brands due to its market dominance, data collection, and technological advantages in the area of artificial intelligence. It is considered one of the Big Five American information technology companies, alongside Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft.
- Level : Medium to Hard
- Interview and Recruitment process : Average
Application Process
Google Recruiter reached out to me on linkedIn for the interview of the Application Engineer position.
About the Role : This role is generally focused on developing applications which are used by the internal clients (Employees of google). For this role the focus is more on system design and a bit less on data structures and algorithms. So, the DSA asked is generally of medium level.
Structure of the interview/Rounds
1. Reaching Out
2. Coding Round 1
3. Coding Round 2
4. System Design Round (Depends on the result of Coding Round 1+2)
Reaching Out
Google recruiters reached out to me on linkedIn . So, it becomes very important to keep your linkedIn profile updated with your projects, skills, experience and achievements.
Coding Round 1
Time -: 45 min
Platform -: Google Doc
This round was fully based on data structures and algorithms. I was asked 1 Medium level problem .
Problem:
This problem was based on Circular Dynamic Programming
Firstly, I discussed with them different test cases and then went on with telling them the brute force approach, they asked for the time and space complexity of the problem and then told me to optimise it. Then I discussed the optimised approach with them and implemented it.
Coding Round 2
Time -: 45 min
Platform -: Google Doc
This round was conducted on the same day of Coding Round 1 . This round was also based on data structures and algorithms. 1 medium level problem was discussed, with their optimised approaches and time and space complexities.
Problem:
1) It was a string+hash map based medium level leetcode problem.
sol — The problem was modified at different stages by adding more test cases. And every approach I told them, I was asked to implement it and the time and space complexity were discussed every time I changed my approach.
NOTE: The technical rounds can be easily aced by practicing DSA problems on leetcode and giving contests regularly. The topics from which questions can come from are: dynamic programming, Trees, Recursion, Linked list, String, Arrays etc. The level of questions is generally medium for the application engineer position.
Time and space complexity determination is highly important along with identifying edge cases, fitting the right data structure, applying the right algorithm, thinking aloud, and explaining nicely.
System Design Round
Time -: 45 min + 15 min (Googlyness)
Platform -: Google Doc
This round is conducted only when the result of coding round 1 + coding round 2 is promising . My system design round was scheduled 2 days after my coding rounds.
This round was based on high level system design. The main focus of this round was to test the approach to design a good scalable system , design API and database.
I was given a system to design, where I needed to built an online goodies shopping site for the google employees.
I discussed the following things for the application design.
1. Different servers for different regions.
2. Load balancing for servers.
3. Horizontal scaling the whole application.
4. Type of database (sql vs NoSql) that can be used and then fast querying through indexing.
5. Caching the data for already signed up user.
6. Possible Microservices that can be used in the application.
7. Third Party for managing payment gateway (one of the possible micro-service).
In the meanwhile I kept on discussing ,
a) The designing of the database. The number of tables required, the types of rows and columns which can be used to efficiently query the data.
b) The designing of the Api . That is , how the Api endpoints will be like with the type of request on it .
I explained the architecture by drawing it roughly on google doc . Which made it easier for me to explain .
This round was mostly based on the direction you take it to. You will be asked the question based on your approaches and ideas.
The Interviewers also give needed hints and tells the negatives and positives of a particular approach.
Source to study : https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMCXHnjXnTnvo6alSjVkgxV-VH6EPyvoX || Educative.io || GFG
Googlyness : In this part, questions based on team project , team work and time management is discussed . Discussion on these topics goes for around 15 mins .
To Conclude
I received a positive response from the interviewer and from the feedback form as well. But the hiring was stopped in between due to some internal reasons.
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