Life360 Android Engineer Interview Questions
& Process

The interview process was high standard and enjoyable but a bit much overall. There were a total of 6 rounds of interviews, including 4 technical ones: 2 rounds of online code challenges, 1 system design interview, and 1 pair programming interview. There were also 2 soft-skills interviews. A pro was that the interviewers were very friendly and polite, with nice planning and timing. A con was that the process felt like too much for the position.

So, first I spoke with the technical recruiter, asked about my background and what I'm looking for. Then, she set up two more interviews: one with the hiring manager and another with a team member. The hiring manager chat was mostly about my past experience, using the STAR method. The next step was a technical screen where I had to code. Specifically, I needed to create a class to manage data for circles, handling adding, deleting, and querying entries. After finishing the code, I had to discuss the time complexity and how to optimize it.

The process started with a phone interview featuring several general Java questions, followed by an onsite interview. I noticed some red flags on Glassdoor beforehand but didn't pay much attention. My overall experience was quite negative. The interviews felt very scripted, with some questions even being repeated. While some interviewers seemed experienced, their knowledge of Android architecture and patterns like RxJava was surprisingly lacking, as they relied heavily on third-party libraries and less on custom algorithms. Of the three onsite interviews, two went well, but the last one was a disaster. The interviewer was rigid in his thinking and couldn't grasp alternative problem-solving approaches. He initially suggested it was the final onsite and they usually don't require further onsite interviews for decisions, promising a quick one for me. However, it turned out they needed me to return for another onsite, which was inconvenient as I was already in final stages with other companies. After a week's delay in getting back to me, I decided to withdraw from the process.