TikTok Software Engineer Interview Questions
& Process
Real candidates share what happened, how many rounds they had,
and how the experience turned out.
Based on 1,028 interview experiences · FREE TO READ
Candidate interview experiences
First-hand accounts from people who interviewed at TikTok.
TikTok
Software Engineer Intern
Intern Average Positive experience No offer 3 rounds
Interview process
Technical screen Phone screen
Interview formats
Coding Behavioral
The interview process included an online assessment (OA) followed by two virtual interviews (VO1 and VO2). The OA had 4 easy-to-medium LeetCode problems. VO1 started with a discussion about my personal experience, and then a LeetCode problem with a unique context, where prefix sum was the optimal approach. VO2 also began with personal experience before presenting a medium LeetCode problem best solved using backtracking.
Confirmed questions4 questions
- What test cases would you employ to validate your solution?
- Could you discuss your personal experiences?
- Solve a LeetCode problem that's easy to medium in difficulty, involving a specific scenario; a prefix sum approach would be ideal.
TikTok
Software Engineer
Entry Average Neutral experience No offer 3 rounds
Interview process
Technical screen Technical screen Recruiter call
Interview formats
Coding Behavioral Technical System Design
For new grad roles, there are typically three interview rounds. The first two rounds (r1 and r2) focus entirely on LeetCode-style coding problems and some basic behavioral questions. The third round (r3) is with the hiring manager and involves a deep dive into your resume, along with a basic system design question and a bit more behavioral assessment.
Confirmed questions1 question
- Describe a situation where you disagreed with a colleague.
TikTok
Software Engineer
Senior Average Negative experience No offer 3 rounds
Interview process
Recruiter call Technical screen Technical screen Onsite
Interview formats
Coding System Design Behavioral
The recruiter was super efficient and responsive. Based on their interview prep doc, it looks like there are 3 rounds total. The first two rounds are coding/system design, and the third round is with the Hiring Manager. I passed the first round but unfortunately didn't make it past the second round. The second round was quite intensive; they asked about my projects, and there was a coding and system design component.
Confirmed questions0 questions
No confirmed questions were included in this interview report.
TikTok Software Engineer Interview Questions
Quoted word for word from TikTok interview reports.
“Given two unsorted lists, sort them and create a list of paired sets, taking one element from each initial list.”
Read reports →“Coding question: How many zeros are at the end of the factorial of N?”
Read reports →“How would you count the number of islands in a 2D grid of 0s and 1s?”
Read reports →“Can you generate a box of length n, with '*' characters forming the border and blank spaces inside?”
Read reports →“Could you find the nearest reachable and unblocked point from a given matrix with obstacles?”
Read report →“Could you code a function to find the longest substring without any repeating characters?”
Read report →“Can you implement a Depth First Search (DFS) on a matrix to locate a specific value?”
Read report →“Can you determine the minimum number of buses required to travel between a source and destination stop, given a set of bus routes?”
Read report →“Can you explain the distinction between an interface and an abstract class in Java?”
Read report →Formats, difficulty and experience
Across all 1,028 TikTok interview reports.