Meta (Facebook) Software Engineer Interview Questions + Guide 2024

Meta, formerly known as Facebook Inc., is a global leader in shaping the way people connect, find communities, and grow businesses. With a mission to move beyond 2D screens, Meta drives innovation in augmented and virtual reality to spearhead the next evolution in social technology.

As a Software Engineer at Meta, you will immerse yourself in cutting-edge projects involving coding, system design, and behavioral assessments across multiple interview rounds. Your role will demand proficiency in data structures, algorithms, and system design to create high-impact solutions.

This guide on Interview Query will help you navigate the interview process seamlessly, offer insights on what to expect, especially on commonly asked Meta software engineer interview questions, and provide valuable preparation tips for your journey ahead.

The interview process usually depends on the role and seniority; however, you can expect the following on a Meta software engineer interview:

Recruiter/Hiring Manager Call Screening

If your CV is among the shortlisted few, a recruiter from the Meta Talent Acquisition Team will contact you to verify key details like your experiences and skill level. Behavioral questions may also be part of the screening process.

Sometimes, the hiring manager may be present during the screening round to answer your queries about the role and the company itself. They may also delve into surface-level technical and behavioral discussions.

This recruiter call should take about 30 minutes.

Technical Virtual Interview

Successfully navigating the recruiter round will open the door to the technical screening round. Technical screening for the Meta Software Engineer role is usually conducted virtually, including video conference and screen sharing. Questions in this 1-hour long interview stage may revolve around common algorithm problems, data structures, and coding exercises.

You might encounter two medium-level coding problems commonly found on sites like Leetcode. Topics may include stacks, depth-first search (DFS), and additional algorithmic concepts. Apart from coding, expect to answer behavioral questions such as handling disagreements with coworkers and solving conflicts within a team.

Onsite Interview Rounds

After the technical screening, you’ll be invited to attend the onsite interview loop, which includes multiple rounds. Each round varies but typically includes:

1. Coding Interviews (2-3 Rounds): Each round consists of one or two medium to hard coding problems. You should be well-prepared to solve problems involving data structures, algorithms, and dynamic programming.

2. System Design Interview: This assesses your ability to solve a non-trivial engineering design problem. You may be asked to design systems like a search system or a file storage solution.

3. Behavioral Interview: This focuses on your past experiences, how you handle conflict, and scenarios where you contributed to a project under tight deadlines and budget constraints.

Typically, interviews at Facebook vary by role and team, but commonly, Software Engineer interviews follow a fairly standardized process across these question topics.

1. Would you think there was anything fishy about the results of an A/B test with 20 variants?

Your manager ran an A/B test with 20 different variants and found one significant result. Would you suspect any issues with these results?

2. What would you do if friend requests on Facebook are down 10%?

A product manager at Facebook reports a 10% decrease in friend requests. What steps would you take to address this issue?

3. What metrics would you use to determine the value of each marketing channel?

Given all the different marketing channels and their respective costs at a company selling B2B analytics dashboards, what metrics would you use to evaluate the value of each channel?

4. How would you test if changing Facebook’s composer feature to a “+” button is a good idea?

Facebook wants to change the user interface of the composer feature to a “+” button at the bottom of the page. How would you test if this change is beneficial?

5. What are the Z and t-tests, and when should you use each?

Explain Z and t-tests, their uses, their differences, and when to use one over the other.

6. Write a function find_bigrams to return a list of all bigrams in a sentence.

Write a function called find_bigrams that takes a sentence or paragraph of strings and returns a list of all its bigrams in order. A bigram is a pair of consecutive words.

7. Write a query to determine how many users have opened an email.

Given a table called events that keeps track of every user’s actions, write a query to determine how many users have opened an email.

8. Write a query to select the top five most expensive projects by budget to employee count ratio.

Given two tables, projects and employee_projects, write a query to select the five most expensive projects by budget to employee count ratio, accounting for duplicate rows in the employee_projects table.

9. Write a query to get the last transaction for each day from a table of bank transactions.

Given a table of bank transactions with columns id, transaction_value, and created_at, write a query to get the last transaction for each day. The output should include the id, datetime, and transaction amount, ordered by datetime.

10. Write a query to get the average order value by gender.

Given three tables representing customer transactions and customer attributes, write a query to get the average order value by gender. Round the answer to two decimal places.

11. What is a confidence interval for a statistic, and why is it useful?

Explain what a confidence interval is, its usefulness in statistics, and how to calculate it.

12. Is it worth playing a game where you win $21 if the sum of two dice equals seven but pay $10 per roll?

Analyze the game’s expected value to determine if it is worth playing.

13. How would you explain a p-value to a non-technical person?

Provide a simple and clear explanation of a p-value and its significance in hypothesis testing.

14. What is the expected number of good ads rated by different types of raters?

1. Calculate the expected number of good ads if 100 raters each rate one ad independently.
2. Calculate the expected number of good ads if one rater rates 100 ads.
3. Determine the probability that a rater was lazy if an ad is rated as bad.

15. What metrics would you use to track the accuracy and validity of a spam classifier model?

You are tasked with building a spam classifier for emails and have built a V1 of the model. What metrics would you use to track its accuracy and validity?

16. How would you evaluate the success of advertising for an event with a 10% weekly increase in search clicks?

You are in charge of tracking the success of advertising for an event. Every week, there has been about a 10% increase in search clicks for the event. Is this good or bad? How would you evaluate whether the advertising needs to improve?

17. How does random forest generate the forest, and why use it over logistic regression?

Explain how random forest generates the forest. Additionally, why would you use random forest over other algorithms such as logistic regression?

18. How would you build a restaurant recommender on Facebook, and what are potential downfalls?

Describe how you would build a restaurant recommender on Facebook, starting with data collection and then the building process. What are some potential downfalls or concerns about adding this feature to Facebook?

19. How would you test if having more friends increases the probability of being an active Facebook user after 6 months?

Describe how you would test whether having more friends now increases the probability that a Facebook member is still an active user after 6 months.

To help you succeed in your Meta software engineer interviews, consider these tips based on interview experiences:

1. Brush Up on Data Structures and Algorithms: Given that the interviews heavily feature coding problems, make sure to refresh your knowledge on common data structures, algorithms, and their time complexities.

2. Practice with Interview Query: Use Interview Query to practice common coding problems tagged with Meta and familiarize yourself with the format and difficulty of the questions.

3. Prepare for Behavioral Questions: These questions can be equally important. Be ready to discuss your past experiences, teamwork, conflict resolution, and how you handle feedback.

What is the average salary for a Software Engineer at Meta?

What is the company culture like at Meta?

Meta is known for its innovative and collaborative environment. The company values creativity and encourages employees to think outside the box. It’s a fast-paced work culture where cross-functional collaboration is frequent, and engineering excellence is highly emphasized.

What qualities does Meta look for in a Software Engineer?

Meta seeks individuals with strong technical skills, problem-solving abilities, and a good grasp of coding fundamentals. Experience with large-scale infrastructure applications and proficiency in languages like C++, Java, Python, or PHP can be particularly beneficial. The ability to communicate effectively and work well in teams is also important.

The opportunity to work at Meta remains highly attractive due to the company’s innovative culture and cutting-edge projects in augmented reality and social connectedness. Aspiring candidates should focus on honing their technical skills, especially in data structures and algorithms, and consider leveraging resources like Interview Query for comprehensive preparation.

If you want more insights about the company, check out our main Meta Interview Guide, where we have covered many interview questions that could be asked. We’ve also created interview guides for other roles, such as software engineer and data analyst, where you can learn more about Meta’s interview process for different positions.

You can also check out all our company interview guides for better preparation, and if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out to us.

Good luck with your interview!