The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Booking.com
Interview
I submitted a hacker rank test with no communication to HR. The next day I received an email that they want to conduct an HR interview as my test went very well(I already knew). I picked up a slot but then no communication at all, no confirmation for the interview. The next week I sent another email to HR but still no reply and then after 2 weeks and few more days I sent one last email for status to which HR replied that because of illness there was no reply so lets do interview, pick up a slot. I had a very cold interview, the HR was yawning throughout, not interested in anything I had to say about and in the end just said that they will discuss my case with hiring committee. Maybe I had a career gap which resulted in this but if that was the case why would they waste my time like this. The worst part is that they didn’t even mention my test throughout the process as I am not sure if the HR is even aware that I submitted a test.
apply online and then got an interview opportunity with the hackerrank test, after thet an hr call and then two rounds of tech interviews, after that there is a beharviour interview
I applied through a staffing agency. I interviewed at Booking.com (Amsterdam) in Jun 2026
Interview
Two stages:
- Technical: consisted of two parts. The first one was a hands-on coding exercise where I had to solve a problem, and the second one was focused on system design.
- Culture fit
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
They asked about idempotency, retry mechanisms, inter-process communication, observability, reliability, and scalability.
I applied through a recruiter. I interviewed at Booking.com
Interview
I recently interviewed with Booking.com for a software engineer role. The process was well-organized and took about 3–4 weeks. It started with an online assessment on HackerRank with a couple of LeetCode medium problems. That was followed by a technical screen where I did live coding and discussed basic algorithms. The final round was a full day of back-to-back sessions: algorithmic coding, system design (something like designing a hotel availability checker), a behavioral round using STAR questions, and a chat with a manager about company values. The interviewers were professional and friendly, and the problems felt relevant to Booking's actual business. On the downside, some coding rounds felt repetitive, and I didn't get much feedback after being rejected. Overall, it was a fair but challenging process. My advice: practice medium-level array and hash map problems, review basic system design, and have solid STAR stories ready. I'd rate it 4 out of 5 stars and would recommend it to other engineers.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Design a hotel search and availability system that returns available rooms for a given date range and can handle high traffic.
Software Engineer applicants have rated the interview process at Booking.com with 3.1 out of 5 (where 5 is the highest level of difficulty) and assessed their interview experience as 59% positive. To compare, the company-average is 59% positive. This is according to Glassdoor user ratings.
Candidates applying for Software Engineer roles take an average of 28 days to get hired, when considering 126 user submitted interviews for this role. To compare, the hiring process at Booking.com overall takes an average of 25 days.
Common stages of the interview process at Booking.com as a Software Engineer according to 126 Glassdoor interviews include:
Phone interview: 36%
Skills test: 16%
One on one interview: 13%
Presentation: 11%
Group panel interview: 11%
Background check: 6%
Personality test: 3%
IQ intelligence test: 2%
Other: 2%
Drug test: 1%
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