Most common Airbnb coding Interview questions

Process
Questions

Airbnb, founded in 2008 by Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia, and Nathan Blecharczyk, was inspired by a simple idea: renting out air mattresses in their San Francisco apartment during a design conference when local hotels were fully booked. Their first three guests validated the concept, prompting them to build a website called “AirBed & Breakfast.” After struggling to attract investors, they famously sold novelty cereal boxes—“Obama O’s” and “Cap’n McCain’s”—to raise funds. Their big break came when they were accepted into Y Combinator in 2009, where they rebranded as Airbnb, expanding the platform beyond shared spaces to include entire homes and unique stays. This marked the beginning of their transformation into a global hospitality giant. Airbnb operates in over 220 countries and regions today, with more than 8 million listings worldwide. It went public in 2020 and continues to innovate in the travel and experiences space. It offers everything from local tours to long-term rentals, while staying committed to helping people belong anywhere.

Airbnb logo

The interview process at Airbnb is designed to assess both technical proficiency and cultural alignment. Candidates typically begin with an initial application, followed by a recruiter screen to discuss their background and interest in the company. Successful applicants proceed to technical or role-specific interviews, tackling coding challenges or case studies relevant to the position. The final stages often involve cross-functional interviews to evaluate collaboration skills and a strong cultural fit with Airbnb’s core values.

With a solid understanding of Airbnb’s interview process and the right preparation tools at your disposal, let’s look at some of the top coding interview questions asked at Airbnb.

  • Technical coding interviews: These test algorithmic thinking and code quality.
  • System Design evaluations: These assess your ability to design scalable, robust software systems.
  • Behavioral assessments: These explore how you collaborate in teams and align with Slack’s culture.

Technical coding interview questions

Below are two of the most frequently asked coding interview questions at Airbnb, selected based on their popularity and recurrence in recent technical interviews.

1. Merge intervals

Problem statement:

Given an array of intervals where intervals[i] = [starti, endi], merge all overlapping intervals, and return an array of the non-overlapping intervals that cover all the intervals in the input.

Solution:

The key is to first sort the intervals based on their start times. Then, iterate through the sorted intervals and merge them if they overlap by comparing the end of the current interval with the start of the next.

Below is the Python code for the solution above:

Solution Code:

Merge intervals

The time complexity is \( O(n \log n) \), driven by the sorting of intervals, while the merging itself takes linear time. The space complexity of the merge function, excluding the output array, is \( O(\log n) \) due to Python’s in-place Timsort stack space during sorting. However, the pure algorithm itself (excluding sorting and output) uses only \( O(1) \) space for constant-sized variables.

2. Serialize and deserialize binary tree

Problem statement:

Design an algorithm to serialize and deserialize a binary tree.

Serialization is converting a tree to a string, and deserialization is converting the string back to the original tree structure.

Solution:

Utilize a preorder traversal to serialize the tree, representing null nodes with a sentinel value (e.g., #). For deserialization, use an iterator to reconstruct the tree recursively by reading values in the same order.

Below is the Python code for the solution above:

Solution Code:

Serialize and deserialize binary tree

The time complexity of both serialization and deserialization is \( O(n) \), where n is the number of nodes in the binary tree, since each node is visited exactly once. The overall space complexity of both serialize and deserialize functions is \( O(n) \), with recursion stack space being \( O(\log n) \) for balanced trees and up to \( O(n) \) for unbalanced trees.

More practice coding questions

Below are several more practice questions frequently asked in coding interviews to help you prepare specifically for the Airbnb interview:

Problem Title Problem Statement Solution Essence
Text justification Given an array of words and a max width, format the text so that each line has exactly that width. Iterate through the word list, grouping as many words as fit within the width. Distribute spaces between words, handling edge cases like the last line and single-word lines separately.
Coding pattern: Greedy Techniques
Design Excel sum formula Implement Excel cell operations, including a SUM formula across ranges and cells. Use a HashMap to store cell values and formula dependencies. Apply DFS to evaluate formulas recursively, tracking visited nodes to avoid cycles.
Coding pattern: Graph Traversal – DFS
Minimum window substring Given two strings s and t, return the minimum window in s which contains all characters of t. Maintain a frequency map of characters in t. Use a sliding window with two pointers to find and minimize a valid window in s.
Coding pattern: Sliding Window
Word ladder Find the shortest transformation sequence from beginWord to endWord, changing one letter at a time. Use BFS to explore all valid one-letter transformations level by level. Preprocess the dictionary to build fast adjacency lookups.
Coding pattern: Tree Breadth-First Search
Longest substring without repeating characters Find the length of the longest substring without repeating characters. Use a sliding window and a HashMap to track character positions. Shrink the window from the left when duplicates are found.
Coding pattern: Sliding Window
Insert interval Insert a new interval into a list of non-overlapping intervals and merge if necessary. Iterate and add all non-overlapping intervals. Merge overlapping ones with the new interval and insert it at the correct position.
Coding pattern: Merge Intervals
Course schedule Determine if it is possible to finish all courses given the prerequisites. Use topological sort by tracking in-degrees of each course and starting with those having zero prerequisites. As courses are taken, reduce in-degrees of dependent courses. If all courses are included in the sorted order, the schedule is valid.
Coding pattern: Topolocial Sort
Alien dictionary Given a sorted dictionary in an alien language, determine the character order. Build a graph of character precedence rules from adjacent words. Apply topological sorting to determine a valid character order.
Coding pattern: Topolocial Sort
Find all anagrams in a string Find all start indices of p’s anagrams in s. Slide a window over s with a character count map. Compare window counts to the target count at each step.
Coding pattern: Knowing What to Track
Meeting rooms II Given meeting time intervals, return the minimum number of conference rooms required. Sort intervals by start time. Use a Min Heap to track ongoing meetings by end time, allocating new rooms as needed.
Coding pattern: Merge Intervals

To prepare for Airbnb’s coding technical interviews, consider utilizing Educative’s Grokking the Coding Interview Patterns course. This course focuses on teaching the underlying patterns behind common coding interview questions.  It helps you recognize and apply the right approach during the interview, instead of spending time practicing thousands of individual problems.

System Design interview questions

System Design interviews at Airbnb play a key role in evaluating a candidate’s skill in building systems that are scalable, reliable, and focused on user needs. These interviews often focus on real-world challenges that Airbnb encounters, such as managing high traffic, maintaining data consistency, and delivering smooth user experiences. Below are three prominent System Design questions that candidates may encounter during Airbnb interviews:

1. Design Airbnb’s search functionality

Problem statement:

Design a system that allows users to search for accommodations based on various criteria such as location, dates, price range, and amenities.

Solution:

  • Indexing and searching: Implement efficient indexing mechanisms to handle large datasets, enabling quick retrieval based on user queries.
  • Geospatial queries: Utilize geospatial indexing to manage location-based searches effectively.
  • Filtering and sorting: Incorporate dynamic filtering and sorting capabilities to refine search results according to user preferences.
  • Caching: Employ caching strategies to enhance performance and reduce latency for frequently accessed data.
  • Scalability: Design the system to handle high concurrency and scale horizontally to accommodate growing user demands.

2. Design Airbnb’s booking system

Problem statement:

Create a system that manages the booking process, including availability checks, reservations, and payment processing.

Solution:

  • Availability management: Ensure real-time tracking of property availability to prevent double bookings.
  • Reservation handling: Implement transactional mechanisms to handle booking confirmations, modifications, and cancellations reliably.
  • Payment processing: Integrate secure payment gateways to handle transactions between guests and hosts, including refunds and chargebacks.
  • Concurrency control: Design the system to manage concurrent booking requests efficiently, maintaining data consistency.
  • Scalability and reliability: Architect the system to be fault-tolerant and capable of scaling to meet peak demand periods.

3. Design Airbnb’s review and rating system

Problem statement:

Develop a system that allows users to leave reviews and ratings for their stays, and hosts to respond to these reviews.

Solution:

  • Data storage: Design a schema to store reviews and ratings efficiently, supporting quick retrieval and aggregation.
  • Authenticity verification: Implement mechanisms to ensure that reviews are genuine, possibly by restricting reviews to users who have completed stays.
  • Moderation tools: Provide tools to detect and handle inappropriate or fraudulent reviews, maintaining the platform’s integrity.
  • User interface: Design intuitive interfaces for users to submit and view reviews, and for hosts to respond appropriately.
  • Scalability: Ensure that the system can handle a growing volume of reviews without performance degradation.

To prepare effectively for these kinds of System Design questions, Educative’s Grokking the Modern System Design Interview course is highly recommended.

Behavioral interview questions

In addition to technical excellence, Airbnb strongly emphasizes cultural alignment and value-driven behavior. Behavioral interviews aim to assess how you work with others, grow through experience, and reflect Airbnb’s core values, such as “Be a Host,” “Embrace the Adventure,” and “Champion the Mission.”

Below are some frequently asked behavioral questions at Airbnb, along with sample responses:

1. Tell me about a time you had a conflict with a teammate. How did you handle it?

Here’s how one might approach a design vs. engineering conflict:

  • Situation: On a cross-functional project, a designer and I disagreed on how a booking confirmation screen should behave.
  • Task: We needed to finalize the UI quickly to meet a sprint deadline.
  • Action: I suggested stepping back to align on user goals. I facilitated a short whiteboard session with the team to compare both perspectives.
  • Result: We agreed on a hybrid approach that addressed both design concerns and technical constraints. The final screen tested well with users, and we delivered on time.

2. Describe a situation where you had to work with minimal direction.

A real example from a hackathon project can be as follows:

  • Situation: During a hackathon at work, I joined a team working on a feature idea that lacked formal product requirements.
  • Task: I took ownership of building a location-based notification system.
  • Action: I reviewed internal APIs, designed the flow using Figma, and implemented a prototype. I also scheduled a quick user feedback session with internal teams.
  • Result: The project won the hackathon, and parts of it were later integrated into our product roadmap.

3. Tell me about a time you made a mistake and how you handled it.

This shows accountability and learning through failure:

  • Situation: I once deployed a back-end fix that accidentally broke an unrelated API used by another team.
  • Task: I had to resolve the issue quickly and restore service.
  • Action: I immediately alerted the team, rolled back the change, and worked with QA to add missing test coverage. I also documented the incident in a postmortem.
  • Result: The API was restored within 30 minutes. The team appreciated the transparency, and our new test cases prevented similar regressions in the future.

4. Why Airbnb? What about our mission resonates with you?

A personalized story can help you stand out:

  • I’ve always admired Airbnb’s mission to help people belong anywhere. A few years ago, I stayed in a remote cottage booked through Airbnb, and the host went above and beyond, leaving local travel tips and even baking fresh bread. That personal touch inspired me. I want to build technology that empowers more of those human, meaningful connections across the world.

5. Give an example of a time when you improved a process or system.

Here’s how someone tackled inefficiencies in code review:

  • Situation: In my previous role, code reviews were often delayed, blocking deployments.
  • Task: I wanted to streamline our review workflow.
  • Action: I proposed setting up rotating “review buddies” and introduced GitHub automation to tag reviewers based on ownership.
  • Result: Review turnaround time dropped by 40%, and our release velocity improved significantly over the next quarter.

To prepare effectively for these types of questions, Educative’s Grokking the Behavioral Interview course offers structured strategies and real examples to help you craft impactful, story-driven answers.

Mock interviewers for practice

Mock interviews are one of the most effective ways to simulate real interview pressure while improving your problem-solving approach, communication, and timing. They help reveal blind spots, boost confidence, and strengthen your ability to think clearly under pressure.

A great way to get started is by using Educative’s freemium mock interviewers, particularly the Coding Patterns and System Design options, which provide hands-on practice with realistic interview scenarios at no cost.

These tools offer an excellent, low-risk way to assess your readiness and get comfortable with common formats used at companies like Airbnb.

Recommended preparation resources

To boost your chances of success in Airbnb’s interviews, it’s essential to use the right learning tools. Below are some top-rated resources that cover coding, System Design, and data structures—each tailored for different stages of your prep:

Frequently Asked Questions

Which data structures are important for Airbnb coding interviews?

Key data structures include arrays, hash maps, heaps, trees, graphs, and intervals—mastering these is essential for solving Airbnb-style problems.

Airbnb interviews are considered moderate to hard, often requiring a strong grasp of data structures, algorithms, and problem-solving patterns.

Focus on mastering coding patterns (like sliding window, BFS/DFS, and greedy). Use platforms like Educative’s Grokking the Coding Interview Patterns to practice efficiently.

Yes, Airbnb often asks LeetCode-style problems that test your understanding of fundamental concepts through real-world scenarios.

Airbnb allows candidates to use popular languages like Python, Java, JavaScript, or C++—choose the one you’re most comfortable with.

Company Interview Questions