I applied through other source. I interviewed at Google (Seattle, WA)
Interview
It was pretty laid-back—they wanted to get to know me a bit and explained what to expect next, which helped ease some nerves.
The real challenge was the technical phone interview. They had me solve a couple of coding problems live on a shared doc, and honestly, I was a little nervous at first. But once I got into the groove, I just talked through my thinking while coding and tried not to overthink it. I made sure to test my solutions and explain why I did things a certain way.
A few days later, I had the onsite interviews, which were a marathon of sorts—4 or 5 rounds back-to-back. There were more coding problems, some system design questions, and a couple of behavioral chats where I talked about past projects and teamwork. The interviewers were friendly and asked good questions but kept things professional. It felt like a mix of figuring out if I had the skills and if I’d be a good fit culturally.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Tell me about a time you went against the status quo.
Simple and non technical. No technical questions at all in the initial screening. 3 more interviews after that. Not terrible. All stuff you’ve probably seen before. Some experience and personal questions
recruiter > tech screen on coderpad with advanced sql and some python data manipulation. the onsite was a 5 round loop: data modeling, pipeline design, python coding, advanced sql, and a googleyness/behavioral chat. the pipeline design round is the absolute filter imo - they throw a massive ques at you, like designing a real-time analytics pipeline for ad-click tracking system, and you have to map out the batch vs streaming architecture, idempotency, and how to handle late-arriving data from scratch. the modeling round was all about star schemas, handling slowly changing dimensions (SCDs), and optimizing tables. it felt very practical; it’s more about how you structure data at a massive scale and handle edge cases. for prep, i focused on kimball methodology and practicing streaming architectures. i did a few mocks on Prepfully with google DEs specifically for the pipeline design round and that helped me lot. Skimmed through DataLemur for ques and practice and yeah ofcourse blind/reddit for recent experiences
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
design a data pipeline to process clickstream events from millions of users in real time
Many rounds very The interview process included an initial screening, technical assessment, and behavioral interview focused on communication, problem-solving, teamwork, and adaptability. Final candidates met with leadership to discuss role expectations and organizational fit.