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Meta Software Engineer Interview: Process, AI-Assisted Coding and How to Prepare

How Meta's software engineer interviews work: the tech screen, the full loop (coding, design, behavioral), the new AI-assisted coding round, and original practice questions with solutions. Free, no sign-up.

Facts checked September 30, 20267 min readSoftware engineering

Meta at a glance

Tech screen
45 min
Full loop
Coding, design, behavioural
Typical timeline
About 2 to 3 months
New
AI assistant in technical interviews

The stages

  1. 1Recruiter callOr a pre-screen form
  2. 2Tech screen45 min with an engineer
  3. 3Full loopCoding, design, behavioural
  4. 4OfferVia your recruiter

The 45-minute tech screen

  • Introductions5 min
  • Coding35 min
  • Your questions5 min

From Meta's software engineering prep guide.

Meta's software engineer interviews have a clear structure (a short coding screen, then a loop of coding, design and behavioural interviews) and one big recent change: some technical interviews now include an AI assistant. This guide covers what Meta publishes about its process and how to prepare for both the classic and the AI-assisted formats.

How the process runs

Meta says its process typically consists of a recruiter conversation, an initial screen and a full loop, and that it usually takes about 2 to 3 months from start to finish.

Step through: Meta's hiring process for software engineers

Step 1 of 4

Recruiter conversation

A call about your background and goals. Some roles use a pre-screen form in your Career Profile instead.

Coding interviews: the classic format

Meta's own guidance for coding rounds:

  • You'll code without syntax highlighting or autocomplete, in a shared editor (or on a whiteboard in person). Practise in a plain text editor.
  • Problems are short enough to explain in a few minutes and to solve in 10 to 30 minutes, so pace matters.
  • Think out loud. Meta says it pays a lot of attention to how you solve problems.
  • Working code beats a perfect idea. If you can't find a better solution in reasonable time, write one that works, then improve it.
  • Debug and test yourself instead of waiting for the interviewer to find the bug.

Quick check

Twenty minutes in, you have a correct O(n²) idea but no code, and you suspect an O(n) solution exists. What does Meta's guidance suggest?

The new AI-assisted coding round

Meta's hiring page says its technical interviews now include an AI assistant built into the interview environment, with models such as Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini or Meta's own. Beyond that, the details come from reports, not Meta itself. CoderPad and others describe a longer round (about 60 minutes) where you work in an existing codebase, building a feature, finishing partial code or fixing bugs, alongside a classic AI-free coding round. It began as a pilot, so ask your recruiter which format you'll get.

What this round rewards is different from a classic algorithm problem:

Flip cards · 0 of 5 revealed

Design interviews

Meta's guide describes two kinds, chosen by your background:

  • Systems design: a broad back-end problem. Expect to discuss storage, scaling, caching and trade-offs.
  • Product design: designing client-server APIs and user-facing systems.

Meta notes these almost never involve coding: you talk and draw. Start with requirements and scale, sketch the main components, then go deep where the interviewer steers.

Practice questions (original)

Practice question

Almost a palindrome

easy

Given a string, return true if it reads the same forwards and backwards after deleting at most one character. For example, "racecxar" becomes "racecar" by deleting the x, so it returns true.

Practice question

What you see from the right

medium

Given a binary tree, return the values you'd see looking at it from the right side, top to bottom: the last node on each level.

Practice question

Ad spend that adds up

medium

Daily ad spend changes are a list of integers (they can be negative), e.g. [3, -1, 2, 1, -2, 4]. Count how many contiguous runs of days add up to exactly k.

Behavioural interviews

Meta's guide says this interview is about your background, what motivates you and the impact you've had, and how you'd work in a fast-moving environment. It recommends the STAR method. Values Meta lists in its prep material include Move fast, Focus on long-term impact, Build awesome things and Be direct and respect your colleagues. Prepare stories that show you shipping quickly, owning results and giving or receiving direct feedback.

A 4-week prep plan

Step through: Four weeks to interview-ready

Step 1 of 4

Week 1: Screen-ready

Arrays, strings, hash maps, two pointers, recursion. Solve pairs of problems in 35 minutes, in a plain editor with no autocomplete.

Keep going

  • Refresh a weak area with a free Nokku course, including our course on building AI agents.
  • Show impact on your resume with the free resume builder.
  • Browse remote jobs and set up weekly alerts.

Sources

Checked on September 30, 2026. Hiring processes change, so confirm details with your recruiter.

Nokku.ai is not affiliated with or endorsed by Meta. Company names are used only to describe their publicly documented hiring process. Practice questions are original.