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Software engineer interviews at Google, Meta, Amazon and the AI-first companies are two coding rounds, a system design round from mid-level upward, often a low-level design or machine-coding round, and a behavioral round that decides more offers than candidates expect. This plan sequences the site's questions, guides, quizzes and concept pages into six weeks — three on coding patterns, one each on system design and on low-level design with behavioral, all easiest first — with a free week one so you can judge the format before paying for anything.
Built for someone with a few weeks before a software engineer, backend engineer or full-stack loop who already writes code daily. If you are preparing for a site reliability or platform loop, weeks two to four still apply but the design weeks are weighted differently — use the SRE plan instead.
Eleven weeks, 62 steps, about 30 hours. Week one is free with no account.
See every round the loop contains once — coding, system design, low-level design — and finish six real questions. Everything this week is free.
Six weeks at roughly four to six hours a week, or about 30 hours in total. The plan compresses to as few as two weeks by dropping the optional steps first, and stretches to twelve; the core questions stay in every version.
Week one is entirely free with no account: the guide, all six questions and the quiz. Weeks two to six mix free and Pro questions — the pinned classics in the coding weeks include the free ones, the week-five news feed question is free, and every blog post, concept page, quiz and tool stays free throughout.
Progress is derived from questions you have completed and quizzes you have taken, not from a stored position in the plan. If you solved Two Sum last month, the plan already shows it done. Reading steps are not tracked, so the percentage counts questions and quizzes only.
Week one is free. From week 2 the plan uses 30 Pro questions and 1 Pro behavioral guide; the posts, concept pages, quizzes and tools stay free.
See Pro pricingWeeks 1, 2 of the six-week plan, combined.
The patterns behind most first-round coding questions: a hash map to trade memory for a pass, two pointers or a sliding window to avoid a nested loop, sorting to make intervals and duplicates fall out. Easiest first; stop when the pattern is routine, not when the list ends.
Make the first-round patterns routine — the hash-map pass, two pointers, the sliding window, sort-then-scan.
The patterns behind most first-round coding questions: a hash map to trade memory for a pass, two pointers or a sliding window to avoid a nested loop, sorting to make intervals and duplicates fall out. Easiest first; stop when the pattern is routine, not when the list ends.
Only if the set above felt routine. Both are two-pointer or sliding-window questions dressed as something harder — the pattern is the whole solution.
Recursion on lists and trees, a heap for anything top-k, and the three structures interviewers ask you to build from scratch.
The structures behind the second coding round: recursion on a list or a tree, a heap for anything top-k, binary search on anything sorted or monotonic. The design questions here (LRU cache, trie, min-heap) are the ones interviewers use to see whether you can build a structure rather than only use one.
Recursion on lists and trees, a heap for anything top-k, and the three structures interviewers ask you to build from scratch.
The structures behind the second coding round: recursion on a list or a tree, a heap for anything top-k, binary search on anything sorted or monotonic. The design questions here (LRU cache, trie, min-heap) are the ones interviewers use to see whether you can build a structure rather than only use one.
Merging k lists is the heap question every senior loop has some form of; serialising a tree is the recursion question.
The round-two questions: search a grid, order a dependency graph, and write the recurrence before the table.
The round-two questions that separate candidates: breadth-first search on a grid, topological order on dependencies, and the recurrence behind a dynamic programming question. Do the easy DP first — the recurrence is the skill, not the table.
The round-two questions: search a grid, order a dependency graph, and write the recurrence before the table.
The round-two questions that separate candidates: breadth-first search on a grid, topological order on dependencies, and the recurrence behind a dynamic programming question. Do the easy DP first — the recurrence is the skill, not the table.
For senior loops. Word ladder is BFS with a twist, edit distance is the DP question everyone is asked once.
Weeks 4, 5 of the six-week plan, combined.
For senior loops. Word ladder is BFS with a twist, edit distance is the DP question everyone is asked once.
Clarify before you draw, put numbers on the design, and defend the trade-offs — the round that starts at mid-level and decides senior offers.
Weeks 5, 6 of the six-week plan, combined.
The machine-coding round, the behavioral round that vetoes strong technical loops, then one full hard design question under time.
Typically two coding rounds, a system design round from mid-level upward, a low-level design or machine-coding round at many companies and almost universally in India, and a behavioral round. Amazon adds Leadership Principle questions to every round. The plan gives coding three weeks because it is two of the rounds, then a week each for system design and for low-level design with behavioral.
Each coding week is a rule over the bank — a set of pattern topics, a difficulty band and a cap — with a pinned spine of the classics that never moves. A new arrays or graphs question flows into the right week on its own, in difficulty order, without anyone editing the plan. Because progress is derived rather than stored, a week changing under you cannot move what you have already done.
The coding weeks and the behavioral week apply directly. The system design week is back-end weighted; a front-end loop replaces it with a UI architecture round this plan does not cover. Full-stack loops at large companies run the same rounds as this plan.