Spotify Machine Learning Engineer Interview Questions
& Process
Real candidates share what happened, how many rounds they had,
and how the experience turned out.
Based on 19 interview experiences · FREE TO READ
Candidate interview experiences
First-hand accounts from people who interviewed at Spotify.
Spotify
Machine Learning Engineer
Entry Average Positive experience Accept offer 3 rounds
Interview process
Technical screen Technical screen Recruiter call
Interview formats
Technical Coding Behavioral
The interview process began with an hour-long session focusing on Machine Learning (ML) concepts and system design, specifically how to tackle an ML problem. Following that, I had a coding interview that zeroed in on my coding abilities and problem-solving skills, which included two LeetCode-style questions and a friendly interviewer. The last stage was a conversation with a manager, which was a broader discussion covering my background, how I collaborate in a team, and my strategies for navigating difficulties.
Confirmed questions2 questions
- Check if two strings are similar, otherwise return false.
- Implement the Fibonacci sequence.
Spotify
Machine Learning Engineer
Senior Average Negative experience No offer 3 rounds
Interview process
Recruiter call Technical screen Onsite
Interview formats
Behavioral Technical
It was the typical Spotify interview process, which I found to be quite chaotic. The scheduled interview dates and times weren't always accurate, and it was difficult to grasp the purpose of each stage. At times, it felt like the process was designed to make you fail rather than succeed. After the interviews, the recruiter offered detailed feedback, which I eagerly accepted. However, despite sending four follow-up emails over a month, I never received any response, which struck me as quite unprofessional.
Confirmed questions2 questions
- Can you discuss ML use cases?
- Tell me about your experience in a behavioral interview.
Spotify
Machine Learning Engineer
Mid Average Positive experience No offer 6 rounds
Interview process
Recruiter call Technical screen Onsite
Interview formats
Behavioral Technical System Design Case Coding
Had an initial chat with a recruiter about my background and what I'm looking for salary-wise. After that, they decided to lower my level from Senior to MLE2. The final stage involved five interviews, all of which were case studies, except for questions about values. The case studies covered things like designing a recommendation system and predicting the number of active users. There were also a few questions on ML theory and one on SQL.
Confirmed questions4 questions
- Can you design a backend system that incorporates an ML recommendation model?
- How would you build a data pipeline to sort and identify the most popular artists per country?
- What approach would you take to predict the number of monthly active users?
Spotify Machine Learning Engineer Interview Questions
Quoted word for word from Spotify interview reports.
“Implement the Fibonacci sequence.”
Read reports →“Could you write a method to find the length of a list where out-of-bounds values are represented by -1?”
Read reports →“How can we sample a data stream to ensure its distribution matches the real data?”
Read reports →“How would you determine if a song is a duplicate within our music catalog?”
Read reports →“What's the best way to find the hyperparameters for a model you're building?”
Read report →“Describe how you would build a recommendation system to suggest one song per user.”
Read report →“Can you explain Breadth First Search?”
Read report →“How would you build a data pipeline to sort and identify the most popular artists per country?”
Read report →“Can you implement binary search?”
Read report →Formats, difficulty and experience
Across all 19 Spotify interview reports.