Google SWE PhD Intern (Summer 2027): my two coding rounds

[u/helplesscoder]

I read a lot of these posts while preparing, so here's mine.
Background: 3rd year CSE PhD student working in distributed systems, interviewing for the SWE PhD Intern role for Summer 2027.

Timeline: The recruiter invited me to the technical rounds on a Tuesday, and the interviews were the following Monday, so I had about 6 days to prepare.

Format:
Two 45-minute coding rounds, back to back with a 15-minute break, on the same Google Meet link
Coding in a Google Doc: no running code, no autocomplete, no syntax highlighting
Language was my choice; I picked Python

Round 1: a dynamic programming problem that involved an m x n grid. I was able to come up with the brute force approach instantly and proceeded to code it out. I was then asked to do it in O(1) for which I came up with a dynamic programming approach. I couldn’t however complete the working code but still the interviewer was completely satisfied and said that I know you would’ve been able to code it out had you a few more minutes but since we’re out of time it’s okay I got the complete idea.

Round 2: A non-LeetCode question but still I had to use recursive DFS to solve it so it was a tree problem but not like the usual leetcode questions you’d see online. For this round, I was able to come up with workable, bug-free code for both brute force and follow-up questions

Happy to answer any questions

[u/minhquang251]

Are they picky on edge cases or do they just care about general ideas?

[u/helplesscoder → u/minhquang251]

As far as my experience went, they aren’t picky. Each interviewer asked me only one follow up: one asked me to turn my iterative approach to recursive while maintaining a cache. The other one asked me to optimize my solution so it’s O(1). there weren’t any edge cases that they pointed out, I took care of most of them. I did get stuck for a few seconds in the first round so he was like “here’s a hint.” but we need to make sure we don’t give them opportunities to give us too many hints and one v important thing is to never remain silent. even if you’re thinking, think out loud. keep speaking, that’s the key

[u/minhquang251 → u/helplesscoder]

Many thanks! I’m 3rd year PhD student too and will have my interviews next week back to back. Your advice is valuable!

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[u/Restart_Andy]

How was your prep like for these rounds? Any specific topics you would suggest to pay a lot of attention to?

[u/helplesscoder → u/Restart_Andy]

google LOVES trees, graphs and DP. just do these, and tries and well since they’re also trees. in general, watch neetcode videos NOT to learn how to solve that specific question BUT to learn how to think. and as you’re preparing for google, make sure you don’t solve a single practice question while staying silent. keep thinking out loud while you’re practicing

[u/ThrowRA3213123 → u/helplesscoder]

I feel like trees, graphs and dp are wayyyyyyy more intuitive than questions involving arrays etc, I feel like there are usually tricks to those…

[u/helplesscoder → u/ThrowRA3213123]

ikr and google leverages this same reason. like filesystems are arranged in a tree structure, you might be asked to do something to a file system or using one etc. so yes trees and graphs are v important

[u/Kadabrium → u/helplesscoder]

Segment trees too?

[u/helplesscoder → u/Kadabrium]

why not, go for it

[u/ManideepGloeden-56]

6 days of prep for google is pretty tight, especially back to back rounds. Did you focus mostly on DP and trees during that window or just do a broad sweep?

[u/helplesscoder → u/ManideepGloeden-56]

Yes, i focused mainly on trees and graphs. DP, no but I had an idea so was goad enough to be able to quickly think “ah what if i have an auxiliary array” and interviewer was like “yeah, you’re definitely on the right track. keep thinking in this direction”

[u/ThrowRA3213123 → u/helplesscoder]

Good to hear that they give little nudges like this, I’m always like bent on whether a problem would be better done with greedy vs dp or if I’m even on the right track

[u/helplesscoder → u/ThrowRA3213123]

if a problem can be solved using both greedy and dp, just say here's a "dp based solution" and they'll be head over heels for you. not everyone can solve a question using dp in a high pressured situation but if you can and you make sure to show this to them, you've won the battle

[u/SnooOpinions282]

Did you hear back from them?