Apple Software Engineer Interview Questions
& Process
Real candidates share what happened, how many rounds they had,
and how the experience turned out.
Based on 1,160 interview experiences · FREE TO READ
Candidate interview experiences
First-hand accounts from people who interviewed at Apple.
Apple
Software Engineer
Intern Difficult Positive experience Decline offer 2 rounds
Interview process
Technical screen Onsite
Interview formats
Technical Coding Behavioral
Two interviews, both with technical interviewers. The second interview was with the engineering manager for the team. Initial screen had technical questions: difference between a process and a thread, and implementing some basic linked list algorithms. Second interview went about double the allotted time. Lots of grilling on the resume, plus some basic questions on bit shifting in C. Resume questions were much deeper and more challenging than the coding part. They were exploring the limits of the candidate's knowledge on projects they're familiar with.
Confirmed questions4 questions
- what is the difference between a process and a thread
- Implement some simple linked list algorithms
- Write a C function that extracts n bits starting at offset k.
Apple
Software Engineer
Mid Average Neutral experience Decline offer 3 rounds
Interview process
Recruiter call Phone screen Take home Onsite
Interview formats
Behavioral Technical Coding Other
Apple's interview process is multi-stage (around 3-8 rounds), different per team, and focuses a lot on "Why Apple?", problem-solving (both technical and behavioral), and your passion for their ecosystem, using structured approaches like STAR for behavioral questions and LeetCode-style for coding, checking both how you solve problems and why you do things, not just what you got done. You can expect recruiter screens, phone interviews, maybe some take-home tasks, and tough onsite or virtual loops with team members, seeing how you fit into Apple's unique, collaborative culture.
Confirmed questions3 questions
- Which Apple product do you like the most, and why?
- In what ways would you make that product better?
- Why do you want to work at Apple?
Apple
Software Engineer
Entry Average Positive experience No offer 2 rounds
Interview process
Recruiter call Technical screen
Interview formats
Behavioral Technical Coding
Recruiter reached out to me, recruiter screening was basic behavioural questions like what are you studying, tell me one project etc. The technical round just had tell me yourself and then jumped right into the code. It wasn’t a leetcode code but more like a media streaming code (the team that was interviewing was AMT). They asked me to give them mathematical formulas, then asked how do you think we can optimize it. I was confused but tried my best. Interviewer told me he will get back to me in email and then ended the interview.
Confirmed questions5 questions
- What are you currently studying?
- Tell me about one project you did.
- Introduce yourself / tell me about yourself.
Apple Software Engineer Interview Questions
Quoted word for word from Apple interview reports.
“implement an iterator for a binary search tree, so every time the user calls the function next it returns the next element, and after the user iterates through all the tree it will return NULL.”
Read reports →“Given a list of integers, implement a function that finds the two numbers whose sum equals a given target value, without using the same element twice.”
Read reports →“given a grid of 1 and 0, find the point that is closest to the most 1s”
Read reports →“Given an array of integers, find the indices of the two elements that add up to a given target value.”
Read reports →“implement lru cache like leetcode but build everything myself and don’t use any data structures other than a list”
Read report →“Create a memory-efficient algorithm to check if a linked list has a cycle, and then refine it for both time and space efficiency.”
Read report →“If you are given a scrambled alphabet that is already in sorted order, can you work out the original alphabet?”
Read report →“If you have two ropes that each burn for 1 hour at a random rate, how can you measure 45 minutes using just those two ropes?”
Read report →“build the logic for a spreadsheet API that can do calculations based on given cells, where a cell may hold a math expression that includes the value of another cell.”
Read report →Formats, difficulty and experience
Across all 1,160 Apple interview reports.