I applied online. The process took 1+ week. I interviewed at Booking.com (Amsterdam)
Interview
Very smooth with quick feedbacks; Learnt a lot and they were very helpful and friendly.
The phone coding interviews are slightly easier than the actual in-person interviews.
At the in-person interviews focus on applying whatever you learnt. Don't try to do every single hackerrank or leetcode problem and expect to do well. Apply all that knowledge!
Know exactly why you choose a certain data structure...is it more efficient for reading or writing? how much space will that Data structure you chose take on disk? if i chose a key value store then what will my keys be? can i add more information in the key to make lookups faster?
Also another tip: Don't overthink and complicate the answer. Simple answers sometimes are the best way to begin solving the problem
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
I would say do a 60/40 split between data structures and algorithms respectively. Because even if they give you some hints to the right algorithm you still need to figure out your Data structure and how you would store and retrieve that data. For example: if you say you would use a trie then you should be able to answer why, be able to code it, be able to modify it according to new constraints they introduce on the spot, know about suffix tries etc etc
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.