Quora, Inc. Software Engineer Interview Questions
& Process
Real candidates share what happened, how many rounds they had,
and how the experience turned out.
Based on 104 interview experiences · FREE TO READ
Candidate interview experiences
First-hand accounts from people who interviewed at Quora, Inc..
Quora, Inc.
Software Engineer
Mid Average Negative experience No offer 5 rounds
Interview process
Phone screen Technical screen Onsite
Interview formats
Coding System Design Behavioral
The interview process included a phone screen, followed by an onsite interview. The onsite consisted of 1 Algo interview, 1 System design interview, and 2 behavioural interviews. I found the algorithm questions to be a bit much, especially the 2d prefix sum problem, as I think they test memorization more than problem solving.
Confirmed questions5 questions
- A simple LeetCode problem was asked during the phone screen.
- Onsite interview included the LeetCode prefix sum question.
- Then a follow-up with the 2-d version of the prefix sum problem.
Quora, Inc.
Software Engineer
Entry Average Positive experience No offer 1 round
Interview process
Recruiter call Technical screen Take home
Interview formats
Coding Technical
I had an initial interview with Quora recruiters in October 2020 at Grace Hopper Celebration 2020. They hire early careers up to 3 years for New Grad roles, and Machine Learning is grouped with Software New Grad, though Data Scientist is separate. I didn't proceed past the first coding round because I wasn't prepared enough. The process itself was quite straightforward, with questions generally on the Leetcode easy to medium difficulty range. They use CodeSignal for proctored coding assessments, where there were 4 questions to be solved in 70 minutes. The questions involved 2 String Manipulations, 1 Array, and 1 question on a 2D Array/Grid/Matrix.
Confirmed questions3 questions
- A question similar to Anagrams
- A variant of Array sorting
- A DFS-BFS variant question on a 2D Matrix
Quora, Inc.
Software Engineer
Intern Difficult Neutral experience No offer 5 rounds
Interview process
Take home Technical screen Onsite Background check Offer
Interview formats
Coding Technical Behavioral Technical
Applied online and first got a coding challenge with LeetCode easy-medium problems, which I cleared. Then had a technical video interview with an engineer, including a common LeetCode problem. After that, it was a 3-hour virtual onsite with three one-hour interviews: one on algorithms/data structures (like LeetCode Premium), one background check grilling my resume and interests, and a final one where I had to debug and fix a problem in a large codebase. The first two interviews felt standard and went well, but the last one was really tough, and the interviewer's lack of feedback didn't help.
Confirmed questions4 questions
- Determine if two linked lists intersect.
- Find and correct a bug in a provided large codebase.
- Solve an algorithm or data structure problem similar to those found on LeetCode Premium.
Quora, Inc. Software Engineer Interview Questions
Quoted word for word from Quora, Inc. interview reports.
“Find the longest substring in a given string that has no more than 2 unique characters.”
Read reports →“What is the minimum number of knight moves needed to get from one square to another on a chessboard?”
Read reports →“How many moves minimum does a king need to get from its initial position to another spot on the chessboard?”
Read reports →“Given a binary tree and a target sum, find the count of paths that add up to that target.”
Read reports →“What's the minimum number of moves for a king to travel from its starting square to another square on the chessboard, considering there might be guards present? Any number of guards can be positioned on the chessboard, blocking the king's path to those squares.”
Read report →“Given an array, can you change k consecutive elements from 0 to 1 and vice versa? If it's not possible to perform the operation, return -1, otherwise return the count.”
Read report →“Given integers n, m, and a list of queries, provide a list containing the answer for each query.”
Read report →“What is the lease element of an m * n array after removing some rows/columns?”
Read report →“Given a 2D list representing a grid and 4 shapes, write code to fit these shapes into the grid at the first available position and return the number of shapes that can be successfully placed.”
Read report →Formats, difficulty and experience
Across all 104 Quora, Inc. interview reports.