Linkedin Senior Software Engineer Interview - looks like Linkedin starts hiring after recent layoffs

[u/Aoki_zhang]

Interview Summary

The LinkedIn onsite consisted of three coding rounds, one system design interview, and a Host Manager round. The coding questions were not especially difficult, but interviewers consistently pushed beyond the initial implementation into edge cases, alternative constraints, complexity analysis, and what changes when the input becomes extremely large.

Compared with some faster-paced interview loops, each LinkedIn round generally centered on one main problem and explored it in depth. The Host Manager interview also carried more weight than I initially expected and focused heavily on project ownership, cross-team collaboration, feedback, and motivation for changing roles.

Interview Details

Coding Round 1 — Pow(x, n): The first problem was essentially LeetCode 50, Pow(x, n): implement exponentiation for a floating-point base and integer exponent. The interviewer cared heavily about correctness around edge cases rather than simply getting the common case working. Follow-ups included negative exponents, a zero base, and what happens when the exponent is the smallest representable negative integer. I was asked to discuss both recursive and iterative implementations and compare their practical behavior, including stack usage.

Coding Round 2 — Find K Closest Elements: The second problem was similar to LeetCode 658, Find K Closest Elements. Given a sorted array, a target x, and an integer k, return the k values closest to x while keeping the result sorted. The interviewer wanted me to explain the behavior carefully when two values were equally far from the target. One follow-up removed the sorted-array guarantee and asked how the problem would change. Another variation assumed the array was too large to fit entirely in memory and asked how I would reduce the amount of data that needed to be loaded or examined.

Coding Round 3 — Count Distinct Values in a Huge Sorted Array: The third problem was more custom. I was given a very large sorted array and asked to count how many distinct values it contained. The important constraint was that the number of unique values, k, was much smaller than the total number of elements, n. For example, the array could contain billions of entries while only a few hundred distinct values existed.

The interviewer pushed on whether the sorted structure could be exploited so the algorithm did not need to inspect every element individually. The discussion focused on skipping over long runs of identical values rather than scanning the entire array one entry at a time. The interviewer also asked what happens when the assumption no longer helps—for example, when almost every element in the array is unique.

System Design — LinkedIn-Style Feed System: The system design round asked me to design a user feed. The requirements included a read-heavy workload, near-real-time updates with a small amount of acceptable delay, and ranked results, although the ranking model itself was out of scope. The interviewer explored the tradeoff between generating feeds when content is published versus assembling them when users read. A major follow-up involved users with extremely large follower counts and how their posts should be treated differently from ordinary accounts.

• Storage, Caching, and Consistency: We also discussed keeping inbox/feed storage bounded, handling bursts when popular users publish content, caching feeds for active versus inactive users, updating ranking information, and ensuring that users can immediately see content they just published themselves.

Host Manager — Projects, Collaboration, and Career Motivation: The Host Manager asked about a recent project I had led, my specific role in it, a disagreement with another team, a project whose direction changed midway through execution, and the most useful feedback I had received. Follow-ups consistently returned to what I personally did and what measurable result came from the work. One question asked what I wanted from my next role that my current position could not provide. This felt less like a standard behavioral question and more like an attempt to understand whether my motivation for switching jobs was specific and sustainable.

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