How to Prepare for FAANG Interviews in 2025

A practical, step-by-step guide for software engineers targeting Google, Meta, Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft.

Understand What You're Being Evaluated On

FAANG interviews have a consistent structure across companies: a coding round (usually 2–3 LeetCode-style problems), a system design round (for mid-senior levels), a behavioral round (often using STAR format), and sometimes a role-specific round. Knowing which rounds apply to your target level is the first step in planning your prep.

At Google (L3–L5), you'll face 4–5 coding interviews and one system design at L4+. At Meta, expect two coding rounds plus one system design and one behavioral. Amazon's loop includes 5–6 rounds covering coding, design, and heavy behavioral (Leadership Principles). Microsoft typically runs 4–5 rounds depending on team. Knowing the specific format for your target company and level lets you allocate study time effectively.

Build a 6–10 Week Study Plan

Most engineers preparing from scratch need 6–10 weeks of consistent daily study. Rush it into 2 weeks and you'll plateau; stretch it past 3 months without structure and you'll burn out. The core breakdown should be: weeks 1–3 on data structures and algorithms fundamentals, weeks 4–6 on medium and hard LeetCode problems by pattern, weeks 7–8 on system design, and weeks 9–10 on mock interviews and behavioral prep.

Within your LeetCode study, focus on patterns rather than memorizing individual problems. The 15 core patterns — two pointers, sliding window, binary search, BFS/DFS, dynamic programming, union-find, etc. — cover the vast majority of what you'll see. Once you recognize the pattern, solving the problem becomes mechanical. See our LeetCode patterns guide for the full breakdown.

Use Real Interview Questions to Calibrate

Generic LeetCode grinding is necessary but not sufficient. What gives you an edge is knowing the specific questions each company has asked in the last 6–12 months. Companies recycle questions far more than they admit. Former Google engineers have documented that a set of ~200 high-frequency problems covers a large fraction of actual Google coding rounds.

LeakCode aggregates real interview reports from 10+ sources — including 1Point3Acres, LeetCode Discuss, Blind, and Glassdoor — and ranks questions by frequency. Studying the top-20 most asked questions at your target company for the past year is a far better use of time than random problem sets.

System Design: Start With Fundamentals, Then Practice

System design is often the differentiator at L4+ levels. Unlike coding where there's often a clean answer, system design is evaluated on your thought process, communication, and ability to make justified tradeoffs. The fundamentals you must understand: databases (SQL vs NoSQL, sharding, indexing), caching layers (Redis, CDN, write-through vs write-back), message queues (Kafka, SQS), load balancing, and consistency models (CAP theorem, eventual consistency).

Once you have the vocabulary, practice by designing systems end-to-end: URL shortener, Twitter feed, rate limiter, notification service, distributed file storage. Each of these teaches you different tradeoff patterns. At a meta level, the interview is testing whether you can lead a technical conversation under ambiguity — so practice talking through your reasoning out loud.

Behavioral Prep Is Not Optional

Many engineers treat behavioral rounds as an afterthought. At Amazon especially, this is a mistake — Leadership Principles questions carry significant weight and Amazon interviewers are trained to probe deeply. At all FAANG companies, behavioral rounds exist to assess culture fit and impact. A strong behavioral round can overcome a shaky coding round; a poor behavioral round can eliminate otherwise strong candidates.

Prepare 8–10 strong STAR stories from your own experience. Each story should cover: the Situation, the Task you owned, the specific Actions you took, and the measurable Results. Map each story to 2–3 different question types (conflict, failure, leadership, influence, ambiguity). Reusing well-prepared stories across different question framings is the efficient way to prep.

See What Was Actually Asked at Your Target Company

Browse real interview questions from Google, Meta, Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft — aggregated from 10+ sources, ranked by frequency, filtered by role and round.

Browse FAANG Questions