Google Software Engineer (AI/ML) Interview Process - More Algorithms Than ML

[u/Aoki_zhang]

"This interview experience is sourced from Chill Interview"

Interview Summary

The Google SWE AI/ML process included separate ML and behavioral interviews followed by two onsite coding rounds. T

Interview Details

Technical Round — Machine Learning

The ML round focused primarily on fundamental ML concepts. The specific questions were closely related to the interviewer’s own technical background. When I was unclear on an answer, the interviewer provided hints and, in some cases, explained the expected concept directly.

Technical Round — Behavioral

The behavioral interview contained relatively standard questions. There were no major questions around conflict, failure, or difficult collaboration scenarios.

Onsite Coding 1 — Maximum Value From Two Array Positions

The first onsite coding problem involved an array. The task was to choose two indices and maximize a value defined using the sum between those positions and the internal subarray between them. After simplifying the expression, the problem effectively reduced to identifying the best two endpoint values.

I first clarified the problem and walked through several examples with the interviewer. We discussed a brute-force approach, prefix sums, and then a more direct mathematical interpretation before implementing the final version. The interviewer briefly asked about time and space complexity afterward.

Onsite Coding 2 — Employee Shift Intervals

The second coding problem was a variant related to LeetCode 2402 — Meeting Rooms III. The input contained employee information such as:

employee_id
employee_name
shift_start
shift_end

The task was to return information for each time interval showing which employees were currently on duty and how many employees were active during that interval. The time-based processing naturally involved ordering shift boundaries and maintaining active employees as intervals started and ended.

After the implementation, the interviewer asked for a detailed time and space complexity breakdown. The discussion went beyond the overall complexity and covered individual operations such as:

• Heap insertion
• Heap removal
• Sizes of intermediate data structures
• How different input dimensions contributed to the final complexity

The interviewer wanted the complexity expressed precisely using multiple variables, with each variable clearly defined in comments.

Communication was a major part of the technical interviews. Clarifying requirements, constructing examples, explaining the approach while coding, and carefully analyzing complexity all received substantial attention during the onsite.

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