I applied through a recruiter. The process took 1 day. I interviewed at TikTok (Sunnyvale, CA) in Apr 2020
Interview
I'm writing this review based on my experience and also on behalf of my friend who also applied there at totally different role.
Initial chat with Recruiter went well. That is the only thing which was good about it.
Scheduling of next round was a mess, there is a disconnect between HR and their assistant, and the time difference, because most company are in china.
Finally they scheduled the next round, it was straight forward coding phone screen. I wasn't interviewed last couple years and did it just for fun and failed. No questions about it, my fault.
When I spoke with interviewer he said they have 2 SRE now and need to hire 15 this year.
But later my friend told me that he applied there, on completely different role, I was told him what I was asked so he had time to prepare.
I spoke with him and he solved all 3 coding challenges. But next day he forward me email, that he was rejected.
They may claim that their bar is high, but in fact it looks more like discrimination by race or other things, because I don't see reason to reject person at this stage if he solved all challenges.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
1. Find intersection of two arrays (could have duplicate numbers)
2. Parse logs and count number of events by severity level
3. Parse logs messages and count all aggregated errors
1. Hacker rank - Standard leetcode questions that is around medium to hard standard
2. Tech Lead Interview - Test on linux OS on the different commands inclusive of networking and devops practices
3. Manager Interview
I applied online. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at TikTok in Sep 2025
Interview
The process includes two rounds:
Round 1 – 30 minutes of technical questions based on your resume, followed by 30 minutes of live coding on HackerRank.
Round 2 – 30-minute technical interview focusing on problem-solving and advanced concepts.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
explain the work u did in your previous job in detail?
Got a Leetcode Hard about strings on my first round for an entry level role. Interviewer was nice and helped me debug my code and I went extremely over time but solved it in the end. Still in the process.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
What technical challenge did you face and how did you solve it?