I'm gearing up for a phone screen in a few weeks for a Site Reliability Engineer Software Engineer role. The interview will focus on practical coding and scripting, and while I know it won't be heavily based on complex algorithms, I'll need a solid grasp of basic data structures and algorithms like hash tables, trees, recursion, and linked lists. I'm reaching out to see if anyone has experience with this type of interview at Google and can share how they prepared. Are there any specific problem sets or online resources you found helpful for practice? I haven't found much specific information for the SE role.
4 Answers
I recommend starting with LeetCode and focusing on the Easy problems. Make sure to get used to coding in a Google Doc since they don't use a code editor during the interview.
It sounds like you're looking at the wrong kind of question set for an SRE position. Make sure to adjust your preparation to match the specific role you're applying for!
In my interview, they asked me about the entire process that happens when you type 'google.com' in the browser. We went super in-depth down to kernel syscalls. Make sure you brush up on that kind of system knowledge!
Which location are you applying for? I think that can influence the types of questions they ask.
Thanks for the tip! I do have a bit of Linux internals background that should help if I can clear the coding round first.