Airbnb Software Engineer Phone Screen Questions
46+ questions from real Airbnb Software Engineer Phone Screen rounds, reported by candidates who interviewed there.
What does the Airbnb Phone Screen round test?
The Airbnb phone screen typically lasts 45-60 minutes and evaluates core Software Engineer fundamentals. Candidates should expect 1-2 algorithmic problems, basic system design discussion at senior levels, and questions about relevant experience. The goal is to confirm technical competence before bringing candidates onsite.
Top Topics in This Round
Airbnb Software Engineer Phone Screen Questions
Airbnb Fullstack SDE Tech Phone Screen Experience in August
This post was last edited by Anonymous on 2025-09-30 15:54. My interview experience in August: Overall, it was a pretty good experience. The recruiter responded very promptly, and the follow-up after
I read so many interview experiences on the forum, and Airbnb's coding seems really difficult, haha. I stayed up all night memorizing answers 😂 Then the next day they gave me a new question (at least
The following content requires a score higher than 188. You can already view it. Collatz sequence The problem gives you a formula, for example, for even numbers, divide by 2, and for odd numbers, it b
Airbnb Front End Phone Screen: Connect Four Design
**Problem Description** Implement a simulation of the board game Connect Four. The game takes place on a vertically suspended grid with 7 columns and 6 rows. Two players take turns dropping tokens int
Airbnb Phone Screen | Senior SDE
Location - India Duration - 45 mins [Including initial introductions and problem] Phone screen - Was asked variation of https://leetcode.com/problems/minimum-window-substring/ Expectation - Running code with working testcases on codepair
Airbnb | G10 | Remote (US) | March 2024 [Reject]
Sharing my experience since I didn\'t find many posts on Airbnb Staff level. Round 1 (1h): With EM, discussing past projects Round 2: 2 Architecture/System Design (1h each) 1 Coding (45m) 1 Technical Background (1h) Coding...
Airbnb phone screening
Create a simple implementation of the "4-in-a-row" game, also known as Connect Four. This game involves two players who take turns dropping their colored discs from the top into a...
Airbnb | Phone| coding round 2
A patron at a restaurant tells the waiter that out of the given menu, they\u2019d like to order exactly $15.05 worth of appetizers. He offers the waiter computer science literature...
Airbnb Phone Assessment
First question : https://leetcode.com/problems/valid-palindrome/ Solved completely Second question : https://leetcode.com/problems/palindrome-pairs/ Forgot a case of string having palindrome substring so my solution was not correct. Location : SFO Position : TBD Result : called for...
Airbnb | Phone Screen
_ Technical Round 1 A coding question which is similar to the below one: https://leetcode.com/problems/alien-dictionary/solution/ ___________________ Technical Round 2 Given a paragraph of words, find the minimum window that contains all the keywords in the given...
Navi | SSE| Ghosted
Hey all, I recently interviewed with Navi. The HR called me 3-4 times before each interview to remind of interview. But never cared to respond back with any feedback. Round 1: HLD....
Github | SSE | Reject
YOE: 6+ Currently working in a top MNC. I recently interviewed with Github. Round 1: Design crossword. The interviewer was not clear enough in the begining. I asked questions if he meant the...
Airbnb phone interview
Text justification Spend all of X money on menu items.
Airbnb | Phone Screen | Design In Memory File System
I want to share the interview question. This interview happend on 2020.09.25. It was a 45 min interview question: Design an in-memory file system to simulate the following functions: ls: Given...
Airbnb | Phone | Smallest Common Region & 10 Wizards
I recently interviewed at airbnb and failed at second phone interview round. Role Senior Software Engineer Location: SF Question 1: https://leetcode.com/problems/smallest-common-region/ **Question 2:** There are 10 wizards, 0-9, you are given a list that each entry...
Airbnb | Phone Screen | Cheapest way to be friends
Given a dictionary of friends like 0 is friends with 1,2,3 1 is friends with 4,5 3 is friends with 6,7,8,9 5 is friends with 1,2,9 What is the cheapest way for 0 to be...
Location: SF Bay Area No Intro - Just straight to the problem Problem: Find the lowest common territory that holds the given two places. First column of each row is enclosing region, and...
Airbnb | Phone Screen | 10 Wizards
AirBnb software engineer position. Location: Bay Area Experience: 0-2 years Do not remember the question word to word but here is the summary: Given a list of lists of Integers, find the...
Airbnb | Phone screen | Lowest Common Ancestor of Two Regions
AirBnb questions are usually very lengthy, so in short Given a list of string array, In each string array, the first element consists of the rest elements. e.g. [Earth, South America, North America, Asia,...
Airbnb | Phone screen | Design a queue
Build a queue class with the enqueue and dequeue methods. The queue can store an UNLIMITED number of elements. However, the language you are using has a bug which does...
What to Expect in the Airbnb Phone Screen Round
The Airbnb Software Engineer Phone Screen round has a specific calibration purpose distinct from other rounds in the loop. Across 46+ verified reports on LeakCode for this exact round type, the consistent expectations: clear scoping of the problem before diving into a solution, explicit reasoning about complexity, structured handling of edge cases, and the ability to discuss trade-offs between two reasonable approaches.
Reports tagged with the Phone Screen round at Airbnb show recurring patterns in difficulty and topic distribution. The Phone Screen round is typically 45-60 minutes; the interviewer is calibrated against a specific rubric. The discriminator between candidates who advance and candidates who do not is rarely the final correctness of the answer. It is the path: did you clarify, did you verbalize your approach, did you handle edge cases, and did you communicate throughout.
How To Prepare for This Specific Round
Filter the questions below to the most recent reports (past 6-12 months). Questions tagged for this exact round type from this exact company at this exact role level are the highest-signal data available. Older reports may reference questions that have since rotated out of the company's pool.
Practice 4-6 representative problems from this set under timed conditions. The goal is not memorization (companies rotate questions); the goal is to internalize the patterns the interviewer typically reaches for and the depth of follow-up to expect. Reports on LeakCode also tag the typical follow-up depth at this round type, which is the discriminating signal between hire and no-hire calibration.
Phone Screen Round Timing and Format
The Phone Screen round at Airbnb typically runs 45-60 minutes. Use the first 2-3 minutes to clarify requirements; you should never start coding or designing without verifying the input/output format, constraints, and edge cases out loud. Use the next 5-7 minutes to verbalize your approach before writing any code. The middle 20-30 minutes are implementation. Reserve the final 10 minutes for testing with concrete examples and discussing optimization or trade-offs.
Time budget discipline is one of the most reliable senior-vs-junior discriminators in this round. Strong candidates verbalize where they are in their budget out loud ("I've used about 20 minutes, I have 15 minutes left for testing and one optimization"). This signals engineering maturity to the interviewer and creates positive feedback they can capture in writing.
Common Failure Modes in This Round
Reports tagged "no hire" at Airbnb Software Engineer Phone Screen commonly cite: coding silently without verbalizing approach, jumping to implementation before clarifying requirements, missing edge cases (empty input, single element, very large input), producing working code that the candidate cannot refactor when asked, and failing to test their solution with concrete examples before declaring done.
The single most predictive failure mode in 2025-2026 reports: not asking clarifying questions. Interviewers at all FAANG companies are explicitly trained to weight this dimension. Strong candidates ask 3-5 clarifying questions even on problems that look obvious; weak candidates dive into code immediately. The clarifying-question check is often the first signal recorded in the interviewer's notes.
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