TikTok

Software Engineer (Internship) Interview Experience

February 26, 2026

Positive ExperienceNo Offer

Process

Resume questions. Basically, it was just a deep dive into my previous internship and projects on my resume. Then, there was a classic LeetCode-style question, and I got numIslands. Finally, he asked me if I had questions for him.

Questions

They asked me the LeetCode problem numIslands.

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Interview Statistics

The following metrics were computed from 199 interview experiences for the TikTok Software Engineer (Internship) role.

Success Rate

10%

Pass Rate

TikTok's interview process for their Software Engineer (Internship) roles is extremely selective, failing the vast majority of engineers.

Experience Rating

Positive41%

Neutral47%

Negative12%

Candidates reported having very good feelings for TikTok's Software Engineer (Internship) interview process.

TikTok Work Experiences

The place not for everyone

Machine Learning Engineer • Former Employee

Singapore, Singapore

October 20, 2022

Pros: Compensation is good. Technologies are quite new. Colleagues are smart.

Cons: Not collaborative teammates. Chinese is everywhere.

The place not for everyone

Machine Learning Engineer • Former Employee

Singapore, Singapore

October 20, 2022

Pros: Compensation is good. Technologies are quite new. Colleagues are smart.

Cons: Not collaborative teammates. Chinese is everywhere.

Risky, Low Pay, Busy

Data Engineering • Current Employee

San Jose, California, United States

Pros: Not at all, risky, yes.

Cons: Low pay, bad work-life balance, busy.

Risky, Low Pay, Busy

Data Engineering • Current Employee

San Jose, California, United States

Pros: Not at all, risky, yes.

Cons: Low pay, bad work-life balance, busy.

Thriving Company with Great Ambition

Software Engineer • Current Employee

Mountain View, California, United States

Pros: 1. Great leadership team. Most top leaders are very modest and humble, eager to learn from other top tech companies, and easy-going. 2. Very engineer-driven culture. Most top leaders are engineers, so the whole company is managed with an engineer's mindset. More focused on problem-solving rather than playing politics. No ass-kissing. 3. Most employees are self-motivated and have a sense of ownership. 4. Has potential to become a great company like its competitors.

Cons: Lots of things are imperfect in this company, e.g., WLB, language, etc. My observation is that: 1. Things like WLB vary by team; e.g., the WLB in my team is great, with at most 1-2 half-hour meetings after regular working hours (at 7 pm). 2. The management team is serious in resolving most of these complaints, and it is easy to see things are constantly getting better. As a company born in Asia, this is not easy.

Thriving Company with Great Ambition

Software Engineer • Current Employee

Mountain View, California, United States

Pros: 1. Great leadership team. Most top leaders are very modest and humble, eager to learn from other top tech companies, and easy-going. 2. Very engineer-driven culture. Most top leaders are engineers, so the whole company is managed with an engineer's mindset. More focused on problem-solving rather than playing politics. No ass-kissing. 3. Most employees are self-motivated and have a sense of ownership. 4. Has potential to become a great company like its competitors.

Cons: Lots of things are imperfect in this company, e.g., WLB, language, etc. My observation is that: 1. Things like WLB vary by team; e.g., the WLB in my team is great, with at most 1-2 half-hour meetings after regular working hours (at 7 pm). 2. The management team is serious in resolving most of these complaints, and it is easy to see things are constantly getting better. As a company born in Asia, this is not easy.

The place not for everyone

Machine Learning Engineer • Former Employee

Singapore, Singapore

October 20, 2022

Pros: Compensation is good. Technologies are quite new. Colleagues are smart.

Cons: Not collaborative teammates. Chinese is everywhere.

2.0
The place not for everyone
Machine Learning Engineer • Former Employee
Singapore, Singapore
October 20, 2022
Pros: Compensation is good. Technologies are quite new. Colleagues are smart.
Cons: Not collaborative teammates. Chinese is everywhere.

Risky, Low Pay, Busy

Data Engineering • Current Employee

San Jose, California, United States

Pros: Not at all, risky, yes.

Cons: Low pay, bad work-life balance, busy.

3.0
Risky, Low Pay, Busy
Data Engineering • Current Employee
San Jose, California, United States
April 17, 2025
Pros: Not at all, risky, yes.
Cons: Low pay, bad work-life balance, busy.

Thriving Company with Great Ambition

Software Engineer • Current Employee

Mountain View, California, United States

Pros: 1. Great leadership team. Most top leaders are very modest and humble, eager to learn from other top tech companies, and easy-going. 2. Very engineer-driven culture. Most top leaders are engineers, so the whole company is managed with an engineer's mindset. More focused on problem-solving rather than playing politics. No ass-kissing. 3. Most employees are self-motivated and have a sense of ownership. 4. Has potential to become a great company like its competitors.

Cons: Lots of things are imperfect in this company, e.g., WLB, language, etc. My observation is that: 1. Things like WLB vary by team; e.g., the WLB in my team is great, with at most 1-2 half-hour meetings after regular working hours (at 7 pm). 2. The management team is serious in resolving most of these complaints, and it is easy to see things are constantly getting better. As a company born in Asia, this is not easy.

5.0
Thriving Company with Great Ambition
Software Engineer • Current Employee
Mountain View, California, United States
August 6, 2022
Pros: 1. Great leadership team. Most top leaders are very modest and humble, eager to learn from other top tech companies, and easy-going. 2. Very engineer-driven culture. Most top leaders are engineers, so the whole company is managed with an engineer's mindset. More focused on problem-solving rather than playing politics. No ass-kissing. 3. Most employees are self-motivated and have a sense of ownership. 4. Has potential to become a great company like its competitors.
Cons: Lots of things are imperfect in this company, e.g., WLB, language, etc. My observation is that: 1. Things like WLB vary by team; e.g., the WLB in my team is great, with at most 1-2 half-hour meetings after regular working hours (at 7 pm). 2. The management team is serious in resolving most of these complaints, and it is easy to see things are constantly getting better. As a company born in Asia, this is not easy.

TikTok Interview Questions

Generate Parentheses

Given a number 'n', generate all possible well-formed (balanced) parentheses strings of length 2*n. For instance, if n=3, you need to create all valid combinations like '((()))', '(()())', etc.

RecursionStrings

Longest Substring Without Repeating Characters

Find the length of the longest substring within a given string that contains no repeating characters. The substring must be contiguous.

StringsTwo PointersSliding Windows

Search in Rotated Sorted Array

You're given a sorted array that has been rotated, and a target value. Find the index of the target value in the rotated array, or return -1 if it's not present.

ArraysBinary Search

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