Staff Interview Questions at Google

Design YouTube's video upload and processing pipeline. A user uploads a 4K video of 10GB. How does it become available in 360p, 720p, and 4K for streaming?

Implement Dijkstra's algorithm using a Fibonacci heap. Compare amortized complexity with a binary heap and explain when the Fibonacci heap is actually slower in practice despite the better theoretical bound.

You're building a real-time collaborative document editor (like Google Docs) in React. Multiple users edit simultaneously. How do you handle state synchronization without the UI flickering or losing cursor position?

Design Bigtable or a wide-column store from scratch. Explain SSTable, memtable, compaction strategies (size-tiered vs levelled), bloom filters for read optimisation, and how you handle tombstones for deletes.

Design a real-time collaborative whiteboard like Miro where multiple users draw simultaneously.

Design the backend for a Google Maps-like routing service with real-time traffic.

Design a search autocomplete system (like Google's search bar). It must return results in under 50ms, handle 100,000 queries per second, and personalize results based on user history.

Design Google Drive's file sync system. A file changed on desktop must appear on mobile within 5 seconds. Files can be up to 10GB. Handle 100 million users.