I applied through a recruiter. The process took 3 months. I interviewed at Booking.com (Amsterdam) in Sept 2015
Interview
Very standard process: some recruiter reached me out on LinkedIn, then I solved some online programming challenges, then some phone screening, then a more in depth interview with other developers, then the company flew me to Amsterdam where I had four round of interviews: one with the recruiter, then two developers, then other two developers and finally a manager who I wouldn't like be managed by.
The interview is very business focused, but I was able to feel what employees describe about the company during the interview: it doesn't seem to be a challenging environment. The recruiter advertises that the interview is business focused because this is the main challenge for developers. Seems like the developers don't agree, as none of the 8-9 developers I spoke with (some during the interview, and others while walking around with a friend of mine) mentioned that impacting the business is one of the nice things of working at Booking.com. Also, being interviewed by people on the company for at most 2 years doesn't give a good impression on how the company is good at keeping people.
The management structure seems to be very messy, and I was able to feel some stress in the air when I asked about other developers working at Booking.com for more than 5, or maybe 8 years, as I haven't _seen_ any developer working there for more than 2 years.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
There were some very basic programming challenges, and some interesting system design questions. Nothing special.
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.
I applied online. I interviewed at Booking.com (Amsterdam)
Interview
The whole process is composed of about 5 stages. Initial interview, then technical interview, followed by a “ownership” interview, then by a team-fit check interview. The initial interview is done by recruiters not based in the Netherlands (at least my experience) and felt as if the role had already been filled by the time I took it. Was answered with a “I’m doing good, hope you are doing good too. So this interview…” to “Hi, nice to meet you! How are you?”. It simply felt as if they didn’t want to be there and there was 0 engagement.