Scale Engineer

SDE III

Software EngineerLHard

Expedia's SDE III interview process is designed to assess a candidate's technical expertise, problem-solving abilities, system design skills, and cultural fit for a senior engineering role. The process typically involves multiple rounds, including technical screenings, coding challenges, system design discussions, and behavioral interviews.

Rounds·4

Timeline·~14d

Experience·7 - 10 yrs

Comp band·US$150000 - US$200000

Interview time·195 min

Evaluation

What they measure.

  • Technical depth and breadth in relevant areas.
  • Problem-solving approach and analytical skills.
  • System design capabilities, including scalability, reliability, and maintainability.
  • Coding proficiency and best practices.
  • Communication and collaboration skills.
  • Leadership potential and ability to mentor.
  • Cultural fit and alignment with Expedia's values.

Preparation

How to prepare.

Tips

  1. Review fundamental data structures and algorithms.
  2. Study system design principles for scalability, reliability, and maintainability.
  3. Practice coding problems on platforms like LeetCode, HackerRank, or AlgoExpert, focusing on medium to hard difficulty.
  4. Prepare to discuss your past projects in detail, highlighting your contributions and technical decisions.
  5. Research Expedia's products, services, and recent engineering challenges.
  6. Understand common behavioral interview questions and prepare STAR method (Situation, Task, Action, Result) responses.
  7. Familiarize yourself with cloud computing concepts (AWS, Azure, GCP) and distributed systems.
  8. Practice explaining your thought process clearly and concisely, especially during coding and system design rounds.

Study plan

Fig · Study plan — 04 phases

01 / 04
01

Phase 01 of 04

Data Structures & Algorithms

Weeks 1-2: Data Structures & Algorithms fundamentals. Practice 2-3 problems daily.

Weeks 1-2: Focus on core data structures (arrays, linked lists, trees, graphs, hash maps) and algorithms (sorting, searching, dynamic programming, graph traversal). Practice implementing these efficiently and analyze their time/space complexity. Aim for 2-3 problems per day.

Questions

Commonly asked.

  • Given a list of user IDs and their last login timestamps, find all users who logged in within the last 7 days.
  • Design a system to handle real-time flight status updates for millions of users.
  • How would you implement a rate limiter for an API?
  • Describe a time you had to deal with a production issue. What was your approach?
  • What are the trade-offs between monolithic and microservices architectures?
  • Write a function to find the k-th largest element in an unsorted array.
  • How do you ensure data consistency in a distributed system?
  • Tell me about a challenging project you led. What was your role and what was the outcome?
  • Explain the concept of eventual consistency.
  • Design a URL shortening service like bit.ly.

Locations

Regional differences.

Fig · Regions — 03 locations

01 / 03

Location

Seattle

Interview focus

Deep understanding of distributed systems and cloud-native architectures.Experience with large-scale data processing and analytics.Strong leadership and mentoring capabilities.Familiarity with Expedia's technology stack and business domain.

Common questions

  • Discuss a complex technical challenge you faced and how you overcame it.
  • How do you approach designing a scalable and reliable system for [specific Expedia product, e.g., flight search]?
  • Describe a time you had to mentor junior engineers. What was your approach?
  • What are your thoughts on the latest trends in cloud computing and how can they be applied at Expedia?

Tips

  • Research Expedia's recent tech blog posts and engineering challenges.
  • Prepare to discuss your contributions to open-source projects if applicable.
  • Be ready to articulate your design choices with clear trade-offs.
  • Showcase your ability to influence technical direction and mentor others.

Rounds

Round-by-round.

Expand a step for evaluation criteria, sample questions, and prep notes.

DSA

Coding questions at Expedia.

Frequently reported on Expedia loops

View all at Expedia

Other guides

More at Expedia.