Backend Engineer Interview Experience - San Jose, California
Process
Three rounds were conducted.
The first two were technical, and the last was behavioral and system design.
The first two interviewers were both engineers, while the last interviewer was the hiring manager.
They all had somewhat heavy accents, making communication a bit difficult.
Questions
Code a calculator that can add and subtract two numbers. Numbers can only be added/subtracted one digit at a time, with a carry bit.
LeetCode text justification problem (#68).
Tell me about a project; explain the system design.
Design a system for ingesting large amounts of data and flagging when certain rules are met.
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Interview Statistics
The following metrics were computed from 4 interview experiences for the TikTok Backend Engineer role in San Jose, California.
Success Rate
TikTok's interview process for their Backend Engineer roles in San Jose, California is extremely selective, failing the vast majority of engineers.
Experience Rating
Candidates reported having mixed feelings for TikTok's Backend Engineer interview process in San Jose, California.
TikTok Work Experiences
- 3.0Scale Fast, Docs SlowBackend Engineer • Former EmployeeSan Jose, California, United StatesOctober 30, 2025Pros: Operates at an impressive scale. Iterate quickly and fail fast to build successful features.Cons: Fast growth results in a slightly disorganized ecosystem. Lots of technical documentation is fragmented, repeated, and often outdated. Additionally, it is usually written in Chinese, with algorithmic translations available or a translated version of the doc (sometimes outdated!) also available.
- 2.0Bad culture, little growth opportunities.Backend Engineer • Current EmployeeSan Jose, California, United StatesJune 8, 2024Pros: - Generally smart people. - Depending on the team, might have interesting problems at scale. - Good compensation.Cons: - Below average working culture and WLB on a good team, and absolutely terrible working culture and WLB on a bad team. - Many night meetings. - No focus on growth at all; management just chases short-term goals to show off in the review cycle. - Poor tech practices. - Performance theatre.
- 2.0Comp is good, but management is chaotic.Backend Engineer • Current EmployeeSan Jose, California, United StatesMay 8, 2024Pros: Comp is decent. WLB depends on team.Cons: Night meetings. Strict RTO policy. Constant reorgs. Office politics.
TikTok Interview Questions
