Snap’s Interview Process & Questions
The info below is based on conversations with Snap engineers in 2023.
Snap's Interview Process for Software Engineers: 3 Steps
Mid to senior-level engineers interviewing at Snap can expect the following process:
- Recruiter call (1 hour)
- Technical phone screen (1 hour)
- Onsite (6 hours)
Snap’s interview process is fully centralized, which means that everyone enters the same standardized process, and team matching happens at the end.
Like Amazon, Snap has interviewers who are trained up to be Bar Raisers, except that they’re called Deciders. Instead of Leadership Principles, they evaluate candidates on their adherence to Snap’s values: “We are Kind, “We are Smart”, and “We are Creative”. Note that Snap’s behavioral evaluations are spread across all of your interviews, so, unlike most companies, there isn’t a dedicated behavioral interview. Make sure to keep the Snap values in mind during your rounds. They’re also looking for product knowledge and passion for Snap in every interview, so make sure you’re familiar with the app and ready to talk about it. Review their values and specifically their engineering values before heading into your interviews!
Finally, Snap has a bar that’s been described to us as “unexpectedly high”, and exactly how high can vary from team to team.
Step 1: Recruiter Call
Snap’s recruiter call is pretty typical, but in addition to the standard recruiter questions, they may ask you product questions or want to hear about your usage of the app and its features. Be sure to spend some time playing around with their product before going in.
It’s really important, at this stage, not to reveal your salary expectations, your salary history, or where you are in the process with other companies. We wrote a detailed post about salary negotiation that lays out exactly what to say when recruiters pressure you to name the first number.
Step 2: Technical Phone Screen
The technical phone screen at Snap is a data structures/algorithms interview via HackerRank (their interview tool, not the async assessment tool). Depending on the interviewer, there may also be some light behavioral questions in this round (as we mentioned earlier, behavioral questions will be sprinkled throughout the process).
Step 3: Onsite
The onsite at Snap consists of 6 interview rounds with the following steps:
- Coding (4 hours)
- System design (1 hour)
- Q&A (30 minutes to 1 hour)
Coding
There are generally four interviews focused on algorithms and data structures. The main thing they’re looking for besides a working solution that actually runs is speed.
System Design
The system design interview at Snap will focus on high-level system design questions and will likely expect a tie into a feature/design relevant to their product.
Q&A
Once you’ve wrapped up your technical interviews, you’ll get the chance to chat with a hiring manager and ask any burning questions you may have about Snap. This round isn’t meant to be an evaluation and does not factor into whether you get an offer.
Types of Interview Questions to Expect at Snap
Coding
Snap's coding questions come from a company-wide question bank and are usually LeetCode-style questions ranging from medium to hard difficulty.
To figure out what types of questions to expect in your Snap interviews, we did 2 things. First, we spoke to some current and former Snap interviewers in our community. Then we cross-referenced all the anecdotes we heard with Glassdoor data AND our own data-set of mock interviews. Based on all of the above, here are the types of questions you’re likely to encounter:
System Design
Typical questions include:
- Design a chat app
- Design an ad server
- Design a photo sharing app
- Design a document management system
Common Snap Interview Questions
Below are common questions that interviewers from Snap ask on our platform. Since our data comes from mock interviews, questions may not be exactly the same as what you'd see in real interviews.
Reverse a Linked List
Given the head of a linked list, reverse the list and return the new head.
Copy List With Random Pointers
Given a linked list with nodes that have an additional pointer referring to another node in the list, return a deep copy of the list.
How Snap Makes Hiring Decisions
Once you’ve wrapped up your onsite, you’ll be given an offer based on the performance in the technical interviews, decided by your interviewers. Once you receive and accept your offer, you’ll begin the team matching process (given that team matching comes after an offer in their process, we didn’t officially include it as part of the interview).
This process can take several weeks (or longer in some cases), and consists of multiple calls with different interested hiring managers from across Snap.
Snap Interview Replays
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