I applied through a recruiter. The process took 1 week. I interviewed at Netflix (Los Gatos, CA) in Apr 2011
Interview
Overall I had a negative view of Netflix interview process mainly because of one of the interviewers. He was very rude, and was asking really bizarre questions which required detail knowledge on random subjects some of which were not even on my resume. It seemed to me he was playing a game of stump the candidate which was really annoying, and he had a smirk on his face every time he 'caught' me answering something not quite right.
What is the 'Second Normal Form" in a database? wtf is the point of that? I didnt list db skills in my resume, also it didnt have anything to do with the job. I actually knew the answer to that much to his dismay.
The other interviewers were OK. They asked high level questions and drilled down into details and asked some good quesitons, which is a much better approach.
The recuriters are pretty good, and on the ball. They do a lot more and know quite a bit compared to some of the other companies.
I applied online. I interviewed at Netflix in Jun 2026
Interview
Extremely long and involved process. This role had 7 interviews in total with a mix of techincal (coding/systems design) and behavioral (product sense/general). From application to accepting offer took a little over 2 months.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Behavioral mostly focused on "tell me about a time..". Coding was all classic leetcode mediums. Systems design was a standard question.
Seeing the URL shortening service design question caught me off guard at first, but it turned out to be a lucky moment. Just a few days prior, I had practiced a similar architecture problem on PracHub, so I felt somewhat prepared to tackle scalability and data consistency aspects. The process included a recruiter screen, followed by a technical interview focused on system design. Overall, the questions were manageable, but I didn't end up receiving an offer, which was disappointing. The experience taught me a lot, though.
The Netflix interview loop is intense and lives up to its reputation. The recruiters are great, but the technical bar is absolute top tier. After a technical phone screen, the virtual onsite consisted of two deep system design rounds, a practical coding round, and very heavy behavioral rounds focused purely on their Culture Memo. They do not care about how many LeetCode hards you have memorized. They care about how you reason through scale, failure, and ambiguity.
Netflix interviews FAQs
Senior Software Engineer applicants have rated the interview process at Netflix with 3 out of 5 (where 5 is the highest level of difficulty) and assessed their interview experience as 38% positive. To compare, the company-average is 48.9% positive. This is according to Glassdoor user ratings.
Candidates applying for Senior Software Engineer roles take an average of 17 days to get hired, when considering 107 user submitted interviews for this role. To compare, the hiring process at Netflix overall takes an average of 23 days.
Common stages of the interview process at Netflix as a Senior Software Engineer according to 107 Glassdoor interviews include:
Phone interview: 39%
One on one interview: 30%
Skills test: 12%
Group panel interview: 6%
Personality test: 4%
Presentation: 4%
Background check: 3%
IQ intelligence test: 1%
Other: 0%
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