The whole process took about 6 weeks.

I was contacted by a recruiter, due to my HackerRank profile.

I first had a non-technical phone interview with the recruiter, who:

• Explained the SRE role and environment.
• Asked about my level of knowledge on approximately 20 subjects (programming languages, technologies, IT skills, CS subjects). These subjects, as well as my resume, helped them determine the content of the upcoming technical interviews.
• Asked a few canned questions about algorithms, data structures, and Unix internals.

The second step was a 45-minute technical phone interview with a Google SRE, with coding in a shared Google Doc.

I quickly received positive feedback on the technical interview via email from the recruiter. She transferred me to another recruiter to schedule the on-site interviews one month later. The other recruiter provided a lot of preparation information for the on-site interviews.

The third step was the on-site interview: one day with 5 technical coding/design interviews of 45 minutes with Google engineers, plus a 45-minute lunch with another engineer. I got a positive impression of the whole day, with a very friendly and positive attitude from the interviewers.

Finally, I got a call from the recruiter one week after the on-site, telling me that the hiring committee had not recommended hiring me. No details were given (company policy).

Faced with a complex design problem for a large-scale system, I was fortunate that the information provided by the recruiter helped me prepare for such a question.