X Software Engineer Interview Questions
& Process
Real candidates share what happened, how many rounds they had,
and how the experience turned out.
Based on 455 interview experiences · FREE TO READ
Candidate interview experiences
First-hand accounts from people who interviewed at X.
X
Software Engineer
Mid Average Neutral experience No offer 2 rounds
Interview process
Recruiter call Technical screen
Interview formats
Behavioral Coding
It started with a 30-minute recruiter call, but I only got to speak for about 5 minutes. I wanted to ask some questions, but the recruiter was super excited talking about Elon Musk and how he changed the company, so I didn't get a chance. Then, there was an online frontend coding session. I had an hour to complete a task, and they said there would be a Q&A at the end. I think I messed up because I was nervous and it was late. That's probably why I got rejected. It was a good experience overall, but the weirdest part was that I was initially contacted by two recruiters from two different teams. They both set up initial meetings. But after I failed the frontend interview, the second recruiter (for backend) suddenly canceled our meeting and then ghosted me. I'm a backend engineer, so I don't even know why they put me in for frontend interviews in the first place. The bummer is that because of this, another recruiter for a backend position is now ghosting me too.
Confirmed questions7 questions
- Tell me why you are interested in working at X.
- Can you discuss your previous experience, particularly your last role?
- What was your specific role in your prior project?
X
Software Engineer
Intern Average Positive experience Decline offer 2 rounds
Interview process
Technical screen Technical screen
Interview formats
Technical Coding Behavioral
It was a pretty smooth process. There were two technical interviews, covering LeetCode medium to hard problems, plus some behavioral questions about my past resume experience. The process can depend on the specific team, and sometimes they ask domain-specific questions too.
Confirmed questions1 question
- Tell me about a specific decision you made in a previous role.
X
Software Engineer
Senior Average Negative experience No offer 3 rounds
Interview process
Recruiter call Technical screen Onsite Background check Offer
Interview formats
Coding System Design Behavioral
Had an HR screen and a standard coding interview. Then progressed to the final round. The interviewers were really nice during the coding and system design rounds. The final behavioral management interview was okay too – they really delve into your past experiences. What really bothered me was the recruiter going silent. I get not getting the role, but some explanation or at least closing the loop would be basic courtesy. I don't appreciate the whole "let's prep you for the final round, make a great candidate experience" act, only to ghost the candidate. A large candidate pool is great for the company, sure, but I doubt anyone would like being left in the dark after weeks of preparation and hearing nothing. Mostly just super disappointed.
Confirmed questions1 question
- NDA - But Leetcode is a really great prep resource.
X Software Engineer Interview Questions
Quoted word for word from X interview reports.
“Find all words in a dictionary that are one edit away from a given query word, where one edit can be an insertion, deletion, or substitution of a single character.”
Read reports →“Given a binary number, what is its decimal complement? For example, the decimal complement of 0100 is 2.”
Read reports →“Find the peak element in an array of size n in O(log N) time. A peak element is defined as an element that is greater than its neighbors.”
Read reports →“Given two contracted arrays like {times, number, times, number .... }, expand and multiply them. For instance, [1,2,2,4] expands to [2, 4, 4], and [2,1,1,4] expands to [1, 1, 4]. The expected output is [(1x2), (1x4), (4x4)] which equals [2, 4, 16].”
Read reports →“Given an array of sentences and an array of phrases, identify the sentences that include all words from a given phrase.”
Read report →“If you have two strings, and one is an anagram of the other, how many rearrangements does it take to get back to the original word?”
Read report →“Can you show the retweet count for a tweet using only 4 characters, with at most one decimal place, following US and Indonesian standards (e.g., 1.5 b, 3.2k)?”
Read report →“Given an array S of n integers, are there elements a, b, c in S such that a + b + c = 0? Find all unique triplets in the array which gives the sum of zero.”
Read report →“For a given array of integers, could you provide an array containing the count of prime factors for each integer? My solution got too slow, but maybe it's just python is too slow for this problem.”
Read report →Formats, difficulty and experience
Across all 455 X interview reports.