Airbnb G9 (Senior) Interview Guide
A comprehensive guide to the Airbnb G9 (Senior) interview process.
Updated
The Airbnb G9 senior software engineer interview process starts with a recruiter screen, then moves through two phone screens covering coding and system design, followed by an onsite loop that usually has five rounds: coding, code review, system design, a technical experience deep dive, and behavioral. You're looking at eight total rounds that typically wrap up within 2 to 5 weeks, though scheduling can stretch things out depending on availability. What makes this process unique is the dedicated code review round, which officially replaced the traditional second coding interview in 2024 to better assess real world code evaluation skills that senior engineers need daily.
Both the coding and design rounds carry heavy weight for your final hire decision, but the behavioral interview becomes crucial for confirming you can handle the leadership expectations at G9. The code review round is particularly telling since it reveals how you'd actually function as a senior team member reviewing pull requests and mentoring others. The technical experience round matters just as much for leveling, since it's where they pressure test the scope and impact of your past work to decide whether you land at senior. Performance across the design rounds especially will determine whether you stay at G9 or get adjusted to a different level, so demonstrating both technical depth and the operational mindset of someone who's shipped complex systems at scale is essential.
The interview consists of 8 total rounds:
- Recruiter Screen
- Coding Screen
- System Design Screen
- Onsite (Typically virtual)
- Coding Round
- Code Review Round
- System Design Round
- Technical Experience Round
- Behavioral Interview
Interview Rounds
Recruiter Screen
The initial conversation happens over Zoom and runs about 30 minutes. You'll chat with either a recruiter or the hiring manager about your background, what draws you to Airbnb, and whether this particular role makes sense for your career trajectory.
Expect questions about your recent projects, what you're looking for in your next opportunity, and why you want to work specifically at Airbnb. The recruiter will walk you through the interview process, discuss timeline expectations, and cover logistics like salary range and location preferences. If a hiring manager leads this call, they might sprinkle in some light technical questions about your domain experience or ask about specific technologies you've worked with, but nothing that requires coding or deep technical explanations.
This conversation sets the tone for everything that follows. The recruiter wants to understand your motivations and confirm you're genuinely interested in the role, while you're getting a feel for the team culture and expectations. They're also screening for basic communication skills and checking that your experience level aligns with what they're seeking for this G9 position.
Research the specific team you're interviewing with beforehand. Airbnb has many different product areas, and showing you understand their particular challenges and impact demonstrates genuine interest beyond just wanting any senior engineering role.
Come prepared with thoughtful questions about the team's current priorities, engineering culture, and growth opportunities. This shows you're thinking strategically about your career and aren't just looking for any job. The recruiter will remember candidates who engage meaningfully with the role specifics rather than giving generic responses about wanting to "make an impact."
Coding Screen
Your first technical hurdle runs 60 minutes on CoderPad with a live interviewer watching you code. You'll tackle one or two problems that feel more like real engineering work than academic puzzles. Think implementing a cache mechanism, building an iterator for time series data, or creating a class that handles some stateful logic.
The interviewer wants to see how you break down problems, write clean code, and handle edge cases. You'll be coding in real time while explaining your thought process, so practice thinking out loud while you work. They often start with a basic version of the problem and then ask you to extend it or optimize it, which mirrors how requirements evolve in actual product development.
Don't jump straight into coding. Spend a few minutes clarifying the requirements and discussing your approach. Many candidates hurt themselves by writing code immediately without understanding the full scope or edge cases.
The problems tend to involve data structures you'd actually use at work rather than exotic algorithms. You might implement an LRU cache, design a system for handling concurrent requests, or build something that processes streaming data. Write code that looks production ready with proper error handling and clear variable names. The interviewer will ask you to trace through test cases, so make sure your logic actually works.
You're evaluated on four main aspects:
- Problem solving approach: How you break down requirements and plan your solution
- Code quality: Clean, readable code with good practices and structure
- Edge case handling: Identifying and properly managing boundary conditions
- Communication: Explaining your reasoning clearly while coding
Speed matters, but rushing leads to bugs. Focus on writing correct code first, then optimize if there's time remaining. The interviewer would rather see a working solution with good fundamentals than clever optimizations that don't actually work.
Up-to-date
Most commonly asked Coding questions
Airbnb
Senior
System Design Screen
The system design phone screen lasts an hour and happens over video call with a shared whiteboard tool like Miro or Excalidraw. You'll design a large scale system that often relates to Airbnb's business or common web applications. The interviewer presents a broad problem and expects you to architect a solution that could handle millions of users.
This conversation flows more like a collaborative design session than a quiz. Start by clarifying requirements and constraints, then outline your high level architecture. The interviewer will push you on scalability, ask about specific technology choices, and probe how your system handles growth or failures. They want to see you think through trade offs between consistency and availability, discuss caching strategies, and explain how you'd partition data.
The problems often involve designing something like a booking system, notification service, or recommendation engine. You'll need to cover the full stack from load balancers down to database design, but don't get lost in implementation details. Focus on the big picture first, then drill down into specific components when the interviewer asks.
This screen tests your ability to think architecturally and communicate complex ideas clearly. The interviewer cares more about your thought process and ability to justify design decisions than getting every detail perfect.
Show you understand real world constraints like network latency, data consistency requirements, and operational complexity. Discuss monitoring, failure scenarios, and how you'd roll out changes safely. At the G9 level, they expect you to demonstrate the operational mindset of someone who's actually shipped and maintained systems at scale.
"During system design round, interviewer asked a lot of questions in database schema including the data types, which is not expected."
— Recent Airbnb Senior candidate
You're evaluated on:
- Architectural thinking: Designing components that work together effectively
- Scalability awareness: Understanding how to handle growth and load
- Trade off analysis: Making informed decisions between competing approaches
- Communication clarity: Explaining complex systems in understandable terms
Up-to-date
Most commonly asked System Design questions
Airbnb
Senior
Onsite
Coding
The onsite coding round kicks off your in person interview loop with a 60 minute deep dive into algorithmic problem solving. You'll work on a laptop with an IDE, often screen sharing with your interviewer, tackling problems that are typically more complex or multi layered than what you saw in the phone screen.
Expect to start with an initial implementation and then face follow up requirements that force you to evolve your solution. Maybe you'll build a data processing pipeline and then need to add error handling and retry logic, or implement a basic algorithm and then optimize it for specific constraints. The interviewer wants to see how you iterate on working code and handle changing requirements.
Write production quality code with proper error handling, clear variable names, and logical structure. Think about maintainability as you code because the interviewer might ask how you'd extend your solution or what happens if requirements change. Test your code thoroughly by walking through different scenarios and edge cases.
Practice coding on a laptop with a real IDE rather than just online platforms. The onsite environment feels different from phone screens, and you want to be comfortable with the tools and format.
At the G9 level, they're looking for efficient solutions and clean implementations, but they also care about your engineering instincts. How do you structure code for readability? What assumptions do you make explicit? How do you handle error conditions? These details matter as much as getting the algorithm right.
"Unlike Meta, questions also came from outside the top questions on leetcode for the company. In essence, Airbnb asks 1 hard problem per coding interview. It's not required to fully solve it, just to get close."
— Recent Airbnb Senior candidate
Time management becomes crucial since you're dealing with more complex problems. Start with a working solution even if it's not optimal, then improve it systematically. The interviewer would rather see steady progress toward a complete solution than getting stuck on premature optimization.
Up-to-date
Most commonly asked Coding questions
Airbnb
Senior
Code Review
Airbnb introduced this round in 2024 to replace the traditional second coding interview, recognizing that senior engineers spend significant time reviewing code and mentoring others. You'll get 60 minutes to examine a pre written code sample and identify issues, bugs, and areas for improvement. Since you're reviewing existing code rather than writing it, you won't choose the programming language. The code is typically in a mainstream language like Python, Java, or JavaScript.
The exercise mirrors what you'd do when reviewing a teammate's pull request. You might receive a small application, a specific algorithm implementation, or a system component with various quality issues embedded throughout. Your job is to quickly understand the code's purpose, spot problems ranging from logical bugs to style issues, and articulate constructive feedback.
This round tests skills that matter daily for senior engineers but rarely get evaluated in traditional coding interviews. The ability to quickly comprehend unfamiliar code and provide thoughtful feedback directly translates to team productivity and code quality.
Approach this systematically by first understanding what the code is supposed to do, then examining it for correctness, efficiency, and maintainability. Look for obvious bugs, but also consider edge cases, error handling, code organization, and readability. The interviewer wants to hear your reasoning as you identify issues and propose improvements.
Demonstrate the collaborative mindset of a senior engineer by framing feedback constructively. Instead of just saying "this is wrong," explain why it's problematic and suggest better approaches. Show you can balance perfectionism with pragmatism by prioritizing the most important issues when you find multiple problems.
You're evaluated on:
- Code comprehension: How quickly you understand unfamiliar code
- Bug detection: Identifying logical errors and edge case issues
- Quality assessment: Spotting maintainability and design problems
- Communication: Providing constructive, actionable feedback
Point out problems and suggest solutions. Senior engineers are expected to guide their teammates toward better implementations, not just critique existing code.
System Design
The onsite design interview represents the most comprehensive architecture discussion in your loop, running 60 minutes with a whiteboard and diving deep into a complex, large scale system. You'll design something that could realistically serve millions of users while handling real world operational constraints.
This round goes beyond the breadth you showed in the phone screen. The interviewer will push you into specific implementation details, ask about data partitioning strategies, probe your understanding of consistency models, and explore how you'd handle operational concerns like monitoring, deployment, and failure recovery. They want to see both architectural vision and the practical knowledge that comes from shipping complex systems.
Start with requirements gathering and high-level architecture, but be prepared to zoom into specific components. You might begin by designing a recommendation system and then spend twenty minutes discussing how you'd structure the machine learning pipeline, handle real-time updates, and ensure the system degrades gracefully under load.
Prepare for deep dives into 2 to 3 areas of your design. The interviewer will pick components that interest them or relate to their team's work, so have solid understanding of databases, caching, messaging systems, and common architectural patterns.
Demonstrate operational thinking throughout your design. How would you monitor system health? What metrics matter most? How do you deploy changes safely? These concerns separate senior engineers who've run production systems from those who've only built them. Show you understand the full lifecycle of software from development through operation.
Discuss trade offs explicitly rather than just stating decisions. Why did you choose eventual consistency over strong consistency? What are the implications of your partitioning strategy? How does your caching approach handle cache invalidation? This analytical thinking proves you can make informed architectural decisions.
"The system design interview was just the same as a Product Architecture at Meta, no real difference. Get familiar with all the standard problems. Be ready for difficult follow-up questions."
— Recent Airbnb Senior candidate
You're evaluated on:
- Breadth and depth: Covering all major components while diving deep where necessary
- Scalability planning: Designing for growth and handling increased load
- Operational awareness: Understanding monitoring, deployment, and failure scenarios
- Trade off analysis: Making informed decisions between competing approaches
Up-to-date
Most commonly asked System Design questions
Airbnb
Senior
Technical Experience
Many G9 candidates report a separate technical experience round that zooms in on one project you led from start to finish. This isn't a general behavioral chat. It's a focused interrogation of a single piece of work where the interviewer digs into the technical decisions you made, the scope you owned, your specific role versus what the rest of the team did, and the impact you ultimately drove. This round carries real weight for leveling, since it's a big part of how Airbnb decides whether you actually operate at senior.
Pick a project with wide scope and genuine cross-team collaboration. A small feature you shipped solo won't give you enough material to show senior-level ownership. You want something where you navigated ambiguity, made consequential architectural calls, influenced people outside your immediate team, and can point to measurable results. Be ready to go deep on design docs, trade offs you considered and rejected, how you validated impact, and what you'd do differently in hindsight.
Airbnb usually sends a prep guide before this round that lists the "tenets" they're evaluating. Map your story to each one ahead of time so you have a concrete example ready for every dimension they care about, rather than scrambling to connect the dots live.
Expect the interviewer to probe hard. They'll question why you chose a particular approach, push on edge cases you may not have considered, and try to separate what you personally did from what the team accomplished. Use "I" deliberately when describing your contributions, but don't erase your collaborators, since senior engineers are expected to drive results through others too.
You're evaluated on:
- Scope and complexity: Whether the project was substantial enough for senior level
- Technical depth: The quality and reasoning behind your design decisions
- Ownership and role: What you personally drove versus what the team handled
- Impact: Concrete, measurable outcomes from the work
Behavioral
The final round typically runs 30 minutes and focuses on your leadership experience, collaboration skills, and alignment with Airbnb's culture. The interviewer will ask about significant projects you've led, challenging situations you've navigated, and how you've grown as a senior engineer.
Prepare specific stories that demonstrate ownership and impact. You might discuss how you led a cross-functional initiative, resolved technical debt that was slowing down the team, or navigated a difficult stakeholder situation. The interviewer wants to understand how you operate as a senior team member and whether you can handle the leadership expectations that come with the G9 level.
Focus on specific examples that show meaningful leadership and measurable impact on your team or organization rather than generic responses about teamwork and communication.
Expect questions about how you work with product managers and designers, since senior engineers at Airbnb collaborate heavily across functions. Describe situations where you influenced product decisions, advocated for technical improvements, or helped bridge the gap between technical constraints and business requirements. Show you can communicate effectively with non technical stakeholders while maintaining engineering standards.
The conversation will likely touch on how you handle ambiguity, adapt to changing priorities, and grow from feedback. Airbnb values engineers who can thrive in a dynamic environment and contribute to the team's culture. Share examples of times you've mentored junior engineers, improved processes, or helped your team deliver better results.
You're evaluated on:
- Leadership impact: How you've driven results and influenced outcomes
- Cross functional collaboration: Working effectively with product and design partners
- Cultural alignment: Fitting with Airbnb's values and team dynamics
- Growth mindset: How you learn from challenges and develop your skills
Come prepared with questions about the team's culture, growth opportunities, and current challenges. This shows you're thinking strategically about your career and want to contribute meaningfully to their specific context rather than just landing any senior role.
Up-to-date
Most commonly asked Behavioral questions
Airbnb
Senior
Need a hand organizing your behavioral stories around Airbnb's values? Our free Story Builder guides you through creating strong, company-specific STAR stories.
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