I applied online. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Booking.com (Amsterdam) in Jan 2016
Interview
First interview was with the HR with, somewhat, unusual questions regarding i.e. improvement of their service or website. It was interesting. When you give your thoughts and suggestions a follow up discussion will follow. After that, a question about recent technological challenge followed. if they are satisfied with your answers then you will be explained what are the next steps and how the technical interview will look like. The lady from HR stated that the problems on second interview will be much harder than the ones on their hackaton.
Second round of interview is a technical one. In this instance there were two interviewers. I had two 2 problems to solve. More about this in the Questions section. What they ask is algorithm, not a working app.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Union of n arrays with x elements. Output common members contained in at least 2 arrays. Explain the complexity of the algorithm used.
We have a digested server log with username, visited page and timestamp. Create a processing algorithm that will output the most visited page/areas in such a way that will match partial path as well.
i.e.
{
{ user: "user1", page="/home" },
{ user: "user1", page="/home/account" },
{ user: "user1", page="/home/account/profile" },
{ user: "user1", page="/home/account/login" },
{ user: "user2", page="/about" },
{ user: "user2", page="/about/contact" },
{ user: "user2", page="/home" }
}
the output
user1
- home/account
- home
user2
- /about
PS
I'm rephrasing because I cannot recall exactly the question
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.