KAYAK Software Engineer Interview Questions
& Process
Real candidates share what happened, how many rounds they had,
and how the experience turned out.
Based on 29 interview experiences · FREE TO READ
Candidate interview experiences
First-hand accounts from people who interviewed at KAYAK.
KAYAK
Software Engineer
Entry Average Negative experience No offer 1 round
Interview process
Take home
Interview formats
Coding Technical
I got a take-home assignment from the recruiter that I needed to finish within 5 business days. No intro call or anything. After I finished the assignment, the recruiter went silent and I never heard back about any updates. It feels like they aren't moving forward with the hiring. The assignments felt like they were sent automatically.
Confirmed questions4 questions
- Print your name.
- Provide your answer regarding the hybrid setting.
- Complete the given classes for a hotel booking problem.
KAYAK
Senior Software Engineer
Senior Difficult Neutral experience No offer 4 rounds
Interview process
Recruiter call Take home Technical screen Onsite Panel Presentation
Interview formats
Technical Coding System Design Behavioral Presentation
Started with the typical Tech Recruiter phone screen which went well, the recruiter was nice. Then I got a take-home project, a OO design for a racing robots system, due in one week. That got me to an interview with the group lead, which was all high-level discussion, no coding. The final round was 4 hours split into 1-hour chunks with lots of detailed questions about Java, testing, and threading, plus some coding questions where I just had to explain solutions. The last hour was with the architect, discussing my submitted project. He had good points but was very abrasive and blunt about my weaknesses, so I figured I didn't get the job, which I didn't. Honestly, I would've passed anyway because I realized during the interviews that it wasn't a good fit for me.
Confirmed questions5 questions
- For the take-home test, design a multi-threaded OO system involving racing robots.
- Write a function to print numbers from 0 to n recursively, without using any loops.
- Write a recursive function to print numbers from 0 up to n, and then back down to 0.
KAYAK
Software Engineer
Entry Average Positive experience Accept offer 1 round
Interview process
Recruiter call Onsite Offer
Interview formats
Coding Behavioral
Met a KAYAK recruiter at a university job fair. They liked my resume and called me the next day to schedule an interview in Cambridge. I visited the office and met with multiple people from the UI team. The office was amazing and everyone I met was sharp and spoke well. We talked about my previous web development experience and what I'm passionate about. I answered a few easy coding questions and one tough one. Apparently, the whole office goes to the onsite bar on Thursdays at 4:30, so I ended the interview by having a couple of beers with the CTO and the head of engineering. I got an offer letter three days later and accepted it.
Confirmed questions3 questions
- How would you implement the bind function in javascript?
- What types of projects would you be most interested in working on?
- Can you write a Java function to validate items in a list and detect duplicates, where the criteria for 'valid' can vary?
KAYAK Software Engineer Interview Questions
Quoted word for word from KAYAK interview reports.
“Write a recursive function to print numbers from 0 up to n, and then back down to 0.”
Read reports →“Write a function to print numbers from 0 to n recursively, without using any loops.”
Read reports →“Write a program that counts sequentially from a start to an end value without using any iterative programming loops like while, for, do, or for-each. Assume start and end are positive, and start is always less than end. The method signature should be void countUp(int start, int end) { // Code goes here }. Example output for start=0, end=5: 0 1 2 3 4 5.”
Read reports →“Given a code example of what appears to be an immutable class, explain why its internal state can still be modified after instantiation because of object references.”
Read reports →“Given instructions like LFFFRFFFRRFFF for a robot on a grid, where L is turn left, R is turn right, and F is move forward, please write control code to get the robot to the correct destination, and include unit tests. For example, with 'FF', the output should be [0, 2].”
Read report →“Explain how to correct the identified issue in the immutable class example to ensure true immutability.”
Read report →“Can you implement an ArrayList from scratch, without using anything from the Java Collections framework?”
Read report →“How would you find prime numbers within a given range?”
Read report →“Can you explain what a database shard is?”
Read report →Formats, difficulty and experience
Across all 29 KAYAK interview reports.