Airbnb Interview Guide: Process, Questions, and How to Prepare

The Airbnb engineering interview has three stages. They are a recruiter screen, a technical screen or an online assessment, and a virtual onsite loop. Candidates report that the loop is four to six separate sessions. Reported length from the first call to a decision is about three to five weeks.

Airbnb runs a marketplace. Guests book homes from hosts, and both sides need to trust the product. Most of the questions come from that product.

This guide covers each stage, what the interviewer grades, the reported timeline, and how to prepare for every round.

The Interview Process

Not every candidate gets both an online assessment and a live technical screen. Candidates report one, the other, and sometimes both. Ask your recruiter which one applies to your role.

Two parts of this order surprise people.

The first is the code itself. Candidates report that pseudocode is not accepted in any coding round. You write code that compiles, you run it, and you test it yourself.

The second is the two cross functional sessions. These interviewers usually work outside the hiring team, and sometimes outside engineering. Candidates report that a weak values round can stop an offer, even after strong technical rounds.

The loop also changes with the role. Front end candidates report browser coding sessions in place of the algorithm rounds, plus one general coding session on their own laptop. The past experience session and the cross functional sessions stay the same.

The Recruiter Screen

The recruiter screen is a short call, about 30 minutes. The recruiter confirms your experience, the level under consideration, and your location.

You will be asked why you applied. Name a product area and one problem inside it that interests you. General interest in the company reads as no preparation.

This call also sets the format of your next round. Ask which tool is used and how long the session is. Airbnb states that it provides accommodations during hiring, so tell the recruiter here if you need one.

The Online Assessment

Many candidates report a timed online assessment before any live interview. It is sent as a link and takes about 70 to 90 minutes.

The format is not a set of separate puzzles. Candidates report one task in several stages, or a small group of connected problems. Each stage adds a rule to the stage before it.

So the score here comes from correctness and careful reading, not from the fastest algorithm. Write a solution you can extend, because the next stage will ask you to extend it. The answer page What Is the Airbnb Online Assessment Like? explains each stage and what it tests.

The Coding Round

Coding appears at least twice. Once in the technical screen, and once or twice more inside the onsite loop.

The technical screen runs about 45 to 60 minutes on CoderPad. Candidates report one or two problems at medium to hard difficulty. Front end candidates also report one session on their own laptop, so set up your editor before the day.

The topics reported most often are arrays and strings, hash maps, trees, recursion, backtracking, graph traversal, and dynamic programming. Candidates report that graphs and dynamic programming appear here more often than they expected.

A typical question gives you a grid of cells and asks for the number of separate connected regions. You would state the approach, write a traversal, run it on a small grid, and then handle the follow up the interviewer adds.

What the interviewer grades is simple. Code that runs, tests you wrote yourself, and reasoning said out loud while you type. For the full topic list and example problems, see What are Airbnb coding interview questions?.

Practice by pattern, not by problem count. Our course Grokking the Coding Interview groups problems into the patterns that repeat in these rounds.

The System Design Round

The loop includes one system design and architecture session for mid level and senior candidates. You design a system out loud and defend the choices.

The questions come from Airbnb's own product. Candidates report questions such as designing listing search, designing the reservation and booking flow, designing payments, and designing notifications.

These questions share one hard part. Two guests can press the book button on the same listing in the same second. So the interviewer listens for how you hold availability, how you make a booking request safe to retry, and what the second guest sees.

Search has a second hard part. One query filters by map area, by dates, by price, and by guest count at the same time. Say how you index listings for that, and how you keep the index close to current.

State your assumptions before you draw. Name the read and write rates you are designing for. Then name what breaks when one service stops answering, and what the system does next.

The question list is collected in What are the top system design interview questions for Airbnb interview?.

The Past Experience Round

One loop session is about a project you already shipped. Candidates report about 45 minutes on a single project, usually chosen by you.

The interviewer grades three things. The size of the problem, the part you personally owned, and the choices you made against other options.

Pick a project where a decision could have gone the other way. Say what you gave up and why. A project where you only followed instructions gives you nothing to discuss.

The Cross Functional Rounds

Candidates report two cross functional sessions inside the loop. The interviewers usually come from other teams, and often from other functions such as design, product, or data.

These sessions check values and collaboration. Candidates report that Airbnb scores answers against its published core values. Questions about belonging and about hosting people appear often.

One common question asks about a time you helped someone feel included.

Answer with one structure every time. The situation, your task, the actions you personally took, and the measured result. Keep each story under two minutes.

Write your stories before the loop. Cover conflict with another function, a failure you owned, a deadline you saved, and a decision you changed. The answer page Top Airbnb Behavioral Interview Questions (and How to Answer Them) lists the questions candidates report, with a worked answer for each.

You will also be asked why Airbnb. The strong version names a product problem and connects it to work you have already done. See Why do you want to join Airbnb? for how to build that answer without guessing.

After the Interview

After the last session, the recruiter and your interviewers review the feedback together. Every session counts, including the cross functional ones.

Candidates report a decision about one to two weeks after the loop. Between earlier stages, one to two weeks is also the reported wait. Airbnb states on its careers site that applications usually get a response within three to four weeks.

Rejections usually arrive as a short email from the recruiter. Airbnb states that personal feedback is unlikely, because the number of applications is large. Some candidates report a short summary from the recruiter when they ask for one.

Follow up once, about a week after the date your recruiter gave you. One short email is enough. The stage by stage waiting times are collected in How long is the Airbnb interview process?.

Airbnb does not publish a waiting period before you reapply. Candidates report different waits, so ask your recruiter what applies to you.

How to Prepare

Write code that runs, every time you practice. Pseudocode is not accepted here. Solve a medium problem in 35 minutes, then run and test it without help.

Give extra time to graphs and dynamic programming. Both appear more often in Airbnb rounds than candidates expect. Traversal, shortest path, memoization, and table building are the four to drill.

Practice a staged problem. Solve a task, then add a rule and extend your own code. That is the shape of the online assessment.

Prepare marketplace design. Booking, availability, search filters, and payments repeat. Be ready to explain double booking, retries, indexing, and caching in plain words.

Write six values stories. Cover inclusion, helping a teammate, conflict across functions, ownership, a failure, and a decision you changed.

Do a full mock loop in one sitting. The onsite is four to six sessions in a row. Practice the sequence, not only single rounds.

For the design session, Grokking the System Design Interview covers the building blocks these questions repeat, including search and booking systems.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many rounds does the Airbnb interview have? Most engineering candidates report three stages. They are a recruiter screen, a technical screen or online assessment, and an onsite loop. The loop itself is four to six sessions, and the count depends on the level and the team.

Is the Airbnb coding interview hard? Candidates report medium to hard problems. The extra pressure comes from the tooling, because your code has to compile and run. Interviewers expect you to test your own solution before they ask.

Does Airbnb allow pseudocode? Candidates report that it does not. Every coding round expects working code in a language you know well. Practice in one language until you can write it without looking up the standard library.

What are the Airbnb cross functional rounds? They are two loop sessions with interviewers from outside the hiring team, often from another function. They check collaboration and Airbnb's published values. Candidates report that these sessions are scored like the technical ones.

How long does Airbnb take to respond after the onsite? Candidates report about one to two weeks for a decision. Airbnb states that applications usually get a response within three to four weeks. Ask your recruiter for a date, then follow up once after that date passes.

Can I reapply to Airbnb after a rejection? Yes. Airbnb does not publish a fixed waiting period, and candidates report different waits. Ask the recruiter who rejected you what applies to your role.

All Airbnb Interview Questions and Answers

Design Gurus has nine Airbnb answers. Most are linked in the sections above, and the rest are grouped here.

Interview process

• What is Airbnb interview process reddit?

Coding round

• How to prepare for Airbnb interview leetcode?

Company and role questions

• What is an Airbnb interview like?

Guides for other companies are collected in the tech company interview guides hub.