What Is the Goldman Sachs Interview Process Like? (Round by Round)

Goldman Sachs hires software engineers through four main stages. First comes an application and resume screen, then an online assessment or a recorded video interview. After that come one or two live technical screens. The final stage is a block of interviews that Goldman calls a Superday. Candidates report three to five Superday interviews, each about 45 to 60 minutes. The full process usually takes several weeks.

Not every candidate gets every stage. Campus applicants usually record a HireVue video interview early. Experienced engineers more often start with a recruiter call and go straight to a coding screen.

Quick Overview

The HireVue Video Interview

HireVue is a recorded video interview tool. There is no live interviewer. You see a question, get about 30 seconds to think, and then record an answer of up to two minutes. Candidates report about five questions, mostly behavioral, such as a challenge you faced or why you want this firm.

Treat it like a live interview. Look at the camera, structure each answer, and end with a result.

The Online Assessment

The coding test runs on HackerRank, a site that runs your code against hidden test cases. Candidates report two or three problems in 60 to 120 minutes, at easy to medium difficulty. Common topics are arrays, strings, hash maps (structures that store key and value pairs), and simple dynamic programming.

Partial credit exists, so submit working code for every problem, even a slow version.

The Live Technical Screens

Next comes a live coding session with a Goldman engineer, usually on CoderPad, a shared online editor. Candidates report 45 to 75 minutes: a short resume discussion, then one or two coding problems. You are expected to write code that runs, test it, and explain your choices.

Some candidates get one screen, others two. Senior candidates may also get design questions here.

The Superday

The Superday is Goldman's name for the final stage: several interviews held back to back on one day, in person or by video. Candidates report three to five rounds of 45 to 60 minutes each. The mix includes coding, system design for experienced roles, questions about how you build and ship software, and behavioral questions.

Different interviewers check different signals, and the group compares notes afterward. Consistency across rounds matters. Give the same numbers and the same stories to every interviewer. A candidate who changes details between rounds creates doubt.

After the Superday, the recruiter collects feedback and calls you. Candidates report waiting from a few days to about two weeks for a decision. See Top Goldman Sachs behavioral interview questions for the behavioral part. See What to expect in the Goldman Sachs system design interview for the design round.

How to Prepare

• Practice coding by pattern, not by problem count. Goldman questions repeat classic patterns: sliding window, monotonic stack, linked lists, and hash map counting. Grokking the Coding Interview organizes practice around exactly these patterns.
• Do timed HackerRank practice. The online assessment rewards familiarity with the format. Practice finishing two problems in an hour with tests passing.
• Prepare system design if you are past entry level. Start with the fundamentals of scaling, queues, and databases in Grokking the System Design Interview.
• Write your behavioral stories before the HireVue. Five stories with numbers will serve both the video stage and the Superday. See How to answer why do you want to work at Goldman Sachs for the motivation question.
• Ask each interviewer one real question. Goldman interviewers are working engineers. A specific question about their systems ends the round well.