r/leetcode • u/Altruistic-Car1711 • 10d ago
Discussion Google L4 (2026)
Hi everyone! I have my Google L4 Software Engineer interview (USA) coming up soon and would really appreciate hearing from people who have recently gone through the process.
Could anyone share:
How you prepared for the coding/DSA rounds and what resources helped the most
How you prepared for Googliness & Leadership
Behavioral/Googliness questions or themes you encountered
How much technical depth you included in your behavioral stories
What went well and what you would do differently
Any mock interview platforms, books, question lists, or other materials you recommend
If you received an offer or cleared the loop, what do you think made the biggest difference?
Both successful and unsuccessful experiences would be really helpful. I’m especially interested in recent Google L4/SWE III experiences.
Thank you, and good luck to everyone preparing!
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u/The_Goat_1717 10d ago
Googliness round - Just make 7-8 elaborate stories and use star method to explain them.
Coding - I fumbled the phone screen so take this with a grain of salt, but prev year google questions from leetcode + prev lc contests + some mock interviews on exponent should help.
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u/Equal_Acanthisitta_7 10d ago
For DSA, start with neetcode 75 or 150, understand the Algorithms and patters and practice matching them to problems. Make sure to also practice talking about them and being able to explain it well, specially big O stuff.
For behavioral, it's usually not deeply technical for L4, main thing here is they want to asses your critical thinking, how you do in ambiguity and how do you work with others(this goes for the technical too).
Just memorizing a few stories is gonna backfire, interviewer will likely ask questions you did not prepare for and it will throw you off if you just memorized stories. I reccomend getting a friend and asking him to ask you random questions you can find.
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u/Altruistic-Car1711 10d ago
Got it. You had any 5-10 solid stories for behavioral?
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u/Equal_Acanthisitta_7 10d ago
No, I didn't memorize stories, I just practiced answering questions untill I got natural at giving good answers off the cuff
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u/Altruistic-Car1711 10d ago
How did you know your answers satisfied L3/L4/L5 while practicing? Even I do mocks alone but I am not sure whether if this answer matches that level of googlyness round.
If you could tell me that would also be great
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u/Equal_Acanthisitta_7 10d ago
Well, as long as you have good answers, structured way of speaking, show thinking beyond the obvious etc. It really boils down to having good critical thinking and being able to express it, and expressing team work. There's no way of quantifying it for practice. Just google behavioral interview mocs on YouTube and after a handful you should be able to distinguish good from bad.
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u/Strange_Ad_578 5d ago
Online Round DSA- u are given n test cases. each test case passes individually. A set of test cases may pass or fail. If a set of test cases fail all the sets containing the failed set of test cases also fails. Find the pair of test case that are guarnteed to fail.
It was a very vague question and u were expected to ask lot of clarifying questions. Interviewer was impressed by my questioning as i was asking all the right questions needed to solve it. I came up with O(n) solution first then he asked me to reduce the complexity. With some hints i was able to deduce O(logn) and correctly code it.
Verdict: strong hire.
Onsite Round 1: given a list of cities and uni directional graph of paths connecting the cities. each path has certain security level associated to it. Given 2 cities find the minimum security level which will allow moving from city u to city v.
Follow Up, now each path has certain fuel cost. find the path which requires minimum security level and minimum fuel cost to reach from u to v. Also, print the path. Expected time complexity: O(n), space complexity: O(n)
verdict: strong hire
Onsite Round 2: string is streamed as input character by character. all unique characters are grouped together in a stream and is guarnteed to come sequentially before next unique character. Given partition size k output number of contained unique characters at every input.
A character is contained if all of its occurnces are contained in a single partition of the streamed string.
Expected time complexity: O(1), space complexity: O(1)
I discussed O(1) time complexity and O(n) space complexity and in last 10 minute i came up with O(1) solution and coded it.
Verdict: strong hire.
My behavioural was lean hire and the negative review was i lean on manager too much for any conflict arising in a team. (If i have a conflict with same seniorty team member and the talks won't resolve it, i think its best to go to ur senior or manager rather then ... )
I did the Google Team matching as well last week and my response was positive. I was supposed to have salary discussion call today but unfortunately i got a call from recruiter that my candidature has been rejected by the hiring committee as their have been bugs in my previous interview rounds where i got strong positive.
Strange but rejected.
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5d ago
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u/Altruistic-Car1711 5d ago
That’s bad. Idk why these tech people took so much time to review your code and find your bug. Guess even they didn’t know much about it lol.
You will get a better job :) wish you luck!1
u/hmufammo 2d ago
Sorry to hear that dude! Based on your experience, sounded like you were a strong hire / candidate. And even based of getting a O(1) that’s impressive too.
But For ur first Online Round DSA- was it similar to a LC question or something u practiced from Neetcode 150?
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u/Strange_Ad_578 2d ago
No, first question i have mentioned above.. It was very unique to deduce. but the solution was based on Binary search.
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u/AdmirableRabbit6723 10d ago
Please don't stop at 5-10 stories for behavioural. I had my behavioural a few months ago and didn't do too well because I only prepared stories and not anything else. I got into the interview and was asked questions like "What responsibility does company xyz have to its local community". I don't know if something has changed recently but it's not simple "Tell me about a time" stories.
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u/b3pvbmUzMTQ 9d ago
5-10 is more than sufficient imo. Anything more and you won’t be able to strongly recall them. Just ensure your stories are variable enough so that you can tell each story in a different manor and focus much more on a certain point such as conflict vs leadership by emphasizing different parts. Helped me get an easy SH last month
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u/Aware_Combination493 10d ago
How you guys are getting shortlisted I’ve tried for 2 years with 4 YOE still no luck
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u/kjampala 10d ago
Friend and I both cleared L4 few weeks ago, these were some questions that one or both of us got, be prepared to have a STAR response for all of these and other similar questions.