I applied through a recruiter. The process took 4 months. I interviewed at Booking.com (Amsterdam)
Interview
Worst Recruiter Experience Ever
This is a very long and bad story about recruiter experience with Booking.com
One of the recruiter from Booking.com contacted with me at September 23 via Linked'in about Software Engineering roles and after that we contunie on email and we scheduled meeting at a time, I have to reschedule it for later because of my urgent issue. We decided for later.
We scheduled second meeting after one month later on zoom but he didn't show up and didn't inform me before neither after meeting. And I send an email for it but he didn't reply me too.
Until this point it was enough bad but there is more than these.
After months later middle of December he sent me an email that just mentioned new vacancies at Booking.com and I reply him and asked the reason not showing up at first meeting and he didn't give any reply to this email.
Contunie,
Later, one of the an other recruiter from Booking.com, sent me the email about new opportunities and very enthusiastic long explanation about company culture,
I didn't reply that day and next day he sent me other email that ask what I think about it and then I reply him I would like to meet for short talk for the opportunities and I sent my available times and (guess whatttttt :D ) he didn't reply me toooo :D.
Contunieeeee
The first recruiter sent me new message for vacancies a few days ago without any explanation.
I am very curios how this company still exist :D
These are the worst worst experiences ever that I have with recruiters.
4
Other Software Engineer Interview Reviews for Booking.com
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%
Here are the most commonly searched roles for interview reports -