Goldman Sachs Software Engineer Interview Questions
& Process
Real candidates share what happened, how many rounds they had,
and how the experience turned out.
Based on 760 interview experiences · FREE TO READ
Candidate interview experiences
First-hand accounts from people who interviewed at Goldman Sachs.
Goldman Sachs
Software Engineer Intern
Intern Difficult Negative experience No offer 3 rounds
Interview process
Technical screen Recruiter call Technical screen Technical screen
Interview formats
Coding Behavioral Technical
The interview process kicked off with a HackerRank online assessment. It had coding questions on data structures and problem-solving, not too tough if you know common algo patterns. Then came a Behavioral Round, which was more about teamwork, ownership, and handling tough situations. The questions were pretty standard and conversational, just make sure to explain your thinking and give structured examples. The last part was the Loop Round, and this one was way harder. It was all deep technical talks and problem-solving under pressure. They really looked at how you tackled the problem, not just the answer, like how you optimized, and if you used hints. It was intense, needed good fundamentals and clear talking.
Confirmed questions3 questions
- In the loop round, they presented a tough data structures problem that required optimizing from a brute-force approach to an efficient solution, with a strong emphasis on explaining the thought process, handling edge cases, and incrementally improving time complexity. They also asked follow-up questions to probe deeper into the logic and trade-offs.
- The behavioral round focused on teamwork, ownership, and handling challenging situations, with straightforward and conversational questions. It's important to clearly explain your thought process and provide structured examples.
- The HackerRank assessment consisted of coding questions focused on data structures and problem-solving, with a moderate difficulty level that is manageable if you are comfortable with common algorithmic patterns.
Goldman Sachs
Software Engineer
Mid Average Negative experience No offer 1 round
Interview process
Technical screen
Interview formats
Coding Technical
The interview process was the worst in my 9 years of career. I had a technical interview with the hiring manager. He sat in a dark room, looking sideways at the camera, barely visible. No intro, and I was given a Graph problem. I explained my approach and wrote the solution, which passed the default case. I suspected an edge case was missed, but the interviewer smirked and said, 'Oh, you got lucky, you used priority queue, otherwise it would fail,' and 'this code has a flaw, it will fail,' and 'bad logic.' As I was fixing code issues, he made distracting, discouraging noises, saying 'this is a redundant line,' and 'this is stupid.' With 20 minutes to solve, I decided to end the interview, not wanting to work with him. I didn't expect this from Goldman Sachs. Please treat interviewees like humans, or at least equals, and train your staff on how to conduct interviews.
Confirmed questions1 question
- Explain your approach to solving the LC Hard Graph problem and write the solution.
Goldman Sachs
Software Engineer
Entry Average Positive experience Accept offer 2 rounds
Interview process
Recruiter call Take home Technical screen Onsite Offer
Interview formats
Coding Behavioral System Design
The entire interview process spanned 4 months. It started with submitting my application on 8/31. I received an OA invite on 9/5 and completed it by 9/12. Then, on 10/10, I got a Hirevue invite, which I finished on 10/13. A location preference survey came on 10/17. I was invited to the Superday on 11/25. The Superday on 12/4 consisted of two 45-minute interviews. Both involved a lot of resume discussion, and one included a tagged LeetCode question while the other focused on system design. The interviewers were quite friendly and made it conversational. It was a great interview experience overall! I received my offer via a recruiter call on 12/17.
Confirmed questions1 question
- Can you tell me what motivated you to work on that particular project listed on your resume?
Goldman Sachs Software Engineer Interview Questions
Quoted word for word from Goldman Sachs interview reports.
“Given a list of numbers and a value K, identify and return all numbers that appear more than K times.”
Read reports →“Given an integer array of size N where each element is greater than or equal to 0, starting from arr[startIndex], follow each element to the index it points to until a cycle is found. Return the length of the cycle or -1 if no cycle is found. For example, countLengthOfCycle([1, 0], 1) == 2 and countLengthOfCycle([1, 2, 0], 0) == 3.”
Read reports →“What is the expected number of times you'd need to roll a die to get two sixes in a row?”
Read reports →“Find the 2nd lowest integer in an array without using the built-in sort function and with only one loop, aiming for O(N) complexity.”
Read reports →“Given a binary tree and a specific node within it, imagine this node catches fire at time t=0. By time t=1, its immediate neighbors (parent and children) also catch fire. This fire then spreads, with each burning node igniting its neighbors in the subsequent second. What is the total time required for the entire tree to be engulfed in flames?”
Read report →“Can you find the number of occurrences of an element in a given array with O(logN) time complexity and no extra space?”
Read report →“Given an array where all elements appear thrice except for one, find the unique element using bit manipulation.”
Read report →“How would you sort an array in C++ so that the first half is in ascending order and the second half is in descending order?”
Read report →“In Twitter, how would you store and fetch all tweets from a single user, and what kind of database would you use?”
Read report →Formats, difficulty and experience
Across all 760 Goldman Sachs interview reports.