How Airbnb Interviews in 2026: Process, Questions & What They Score
The complete process, reported questions, and what interviewers score.
Airbnb / Interview snapshot
7
stages from
application to offer
37
reported questions
3-6
weeks, typically
30
public sources
Independent: SupaCV is not affiliated with or endorsed by Airbnb. This is one well-documented shape of Airbnb's interviews, not a script: processes change and vary by role, team, level, and region, so confirm specifics with your recruiter.
On this page
01 / For every Airbnb candidate
The process, start to finish.
Airbnb's hiring process runs on two roughly equally-weighted tracks: functional/technical competence (coding, system design, product sense, or analytics depending on role) and "Core Values fit," assessed in a dedicated interview conducted by a cross-functional interviewer from outside the hiring team. Across Glassdoor, IGotAnOffer, Blind, hellointerview, Exponent, InterviewQuery, and Airbnb's own careers FAQ, the process typically runs 3-6 weeks for individual-contributor roles and can stretch past 6-8 weeks for senior roles or when team-matching is involved.
Specifics (number of onsite rounds, exact stage order, whether there's a take-home, and even round formats) vary meaningfully by role (software engineer vs. product manager vs. data scientist), by level, and by year. Airbnb has visibly iterated on its SWE loop (e.g., adding a dedicated live code-review round around 2024), so the stage list below is a composite/typical pattern, not a single fixed script that applies identically to every req.
Stage 1: Recruiter/talent partner screen
30-45 minutes
A 30-45 minute call (phone or video) covering background, resume walkthrough, motivation for Airbnb, and a light gauge of alignment with the mission and values. Reported consistently across roles, including on Airbnb's own careers FAQ.
Stage 2: Technical or functional screen
45-60 minutes per session; take-home challenges 1-3 daysRole-dependent
Software engineers: one or two live coding screens (commonly on CoderPad) on data structures/algorithms, sometimes combined with or replaced by an automated HackerRank/CodeSignal assessment; senior SWE loops may add a separate system-design phone screen on a shared whiteboard tool (Miro/Excalidraw). Data scientists: a screen weighted toward SQL and statistics, sometimes followed by a take-home data challenge (roughly 24-48 hours). Product managers: often folded into a hiring-manager conversation rather than a stand-alone technical screen.
Stage 3: Hiring manager conversation
30-45 minutes
A call with the hiring manager (or a panel member acting in that capacity) to go deeper on relevant experience, motivation, and role fit before committing resources to a full onsite loop. More consistently reported for PM and DS roles than for SWE.
Stage 4: Virtual onsite loop
1 day (4-6 sessions of 45-60 minutes each)
The main event: typically 4-6 back-to-back interviews in one day (virtual since Airbnb's shift to remote-friendly hiring). For SWE this traditionally meant 2 coding rounds, 1 system design round, and 1-2 behavioral/Core Values rounds, but multiple 2024-2026 candidate reports (Blind, hellointerview) describe Airbnb replacing or supplementing the second coding round with a dedicated ~60-minute live code-review exercise, where you review realistic pull-request-style code for bugs, style, and maintainability rather than writing new code from scratch. This isn't yet reported by every source (some 2023-era write-ups still describe two plain coding rounds), so treat it as an increasingly common but not universally-confirmed part of the loop and ask your recruiter what your specific loop includes. For PM, sources describe a loop built around Product Sense, Execution, Metrics Deep Dive, and a Core Values/behavioral round, sometimes preceded by a take-home case-study presentation (a 2-3 page prompt sent about a week ahead) that is presented and defended live. For data science, the onsite can include a timed on-site data/analysis exercise (candidates describe roughly a half-day exercise) alongside behavioral and coding/stats rounds.
Stage 5: Core Values interview
45 minutes
At least one 45-minute interview conducted specifically by a trained interviewer from outside the candidate's functional team, evaluating fit against Airbnb's four Core Values rather than role skills. Some SWE loops report two separate Core Values touchpoints (one within the onsite, one as a final panel) rather than just one. Multiple sources (Blind, IGotAnOffer-adjacent prep sites, Airbnb's own candidate-facing prep materials) describe this as carrying real weight in the final decision. Some describe a weak or negative signal here as effectively disqualifying regardless of technical performance, though this is anecdotal rather than officially confirmed by Airbnb.
Stage 6: Final cross-functional / senior panel interview
30-60 minutesRole- and level-dependent
Reported for PM and some senior loops: a final conversation with a more senior, cross-functional panel unconnected to the hiring team, focused squarely on cultural fit and values rather than functional skill. Not uniformly reported for all roles or levels.
Stage 7: Hiring committee / leveling review and decision
Several days to ~1-2 weeks after the onsite
Feedback from all interviewers is compiled and reviewed by a hiring/leveling committee that normalizes scores across the loop and confirms level. Sources note Airbnb does not have a named 'bar raiser' role like Amazon's, but a poor Core Values read functions similarly as a strong veto signal in practice: the cross-functional interviewer and committee jointly hold that authority. Some processes add a further team-matching step (conversations with one or more hiring managers) after committee review before an offer is finalized, which is part of why senior-role timelines stretch longer.
Sources note Airbnb does not have a named 'bar raiser' role like Amazon's, but a poor Core Values read functions similarly as a strong ve...
A tag is the condition given in brackets in the stage name.
Reported interview time, one scale in minutes
Where the minutes go
- Recruiter/talent partner screen30 to 45 min
- Technical or functional screen45 to 60 min
- Hiring manager conversation30 to 45 min
- Virtual onsite loop45 to 60 min
- Core Values interview45 min
- Final cross-functional / senior panel interview30 to 60 min
Not drawn: Hiring committee / leveling review and decision, whose durations are not given in minutes.
02 / What Airbnb scores
Airbnb Core Values
01
Champion the Mission
02
Be a Host
03
Embrace the Adventure
04
Be a Cereal Entrepreneur
These four Core Values are Airbnb's publicly documented, named evaluation framework and are consistently confirmed across Airbnb's own culture messaging, levels.fyi's company culture page, and multiple independent interview-prep sources: (1) Champion the Mission: "We're united with our community to create a world where anyone can belong anywhere"; (2) Be a Host: "We're caring, open, and encouraging to everyone we work with"; (3) Embrace the Adventure: "We're driven by curiosity, optimism, and the belief that every person can grow"; (4) Be a Cereal Entrepreneur: "We're determined and creative in transforming our bold ambitions into reality," a nod to the founders funding Airbnb's early days by selling novelty cereal boxes.
A minority of secondary sources also mention 'Simplify' and/or 'Every Frame Matters' as additional values; these were reportedly floated internally as aspirational (not core) values and later explicitly dropped, which matches why they don't appear in Airbnb's current official four-item list; treat them as historical/uncertain rather than as confirmed items.
Read the rest of the framework notesShow less
Unlike Amazon's 16 Leadership Principles, Airbnb's framework is deliberately small (4 items) and is evaluated primarily through one or more dedicated Core Values interviews conducted by a cross-functional interviewer, rather than being woven as a rubric into every single interview.
03 / Coach's notes
Coach's tips.
01
Prepare 2-3 distinct STAR stories for each of the four Core Values (Champion the Mission, Be a Host, Embrace the Adventure, Be a Cereal Entrepreneur) and be ready to name which value a story demonstrates; multiple sources describe the Core Values interview as carrying decision weight comparable to technical rounds, conducted by a trained interviewer from outside your target team.
02
Have at least one genuine, specific story about community, volunteering, or belonging outside of work; this is repeatedly flagged (Blind, prep guides) as a distinctive Airbnb question that catches candidates who only prepared work-focused examples off guard.
03
Expect heavy interviewer follow-up/probing on behavioral answers rather than a single scripted question; know your stories well enough to handle unscripted digging, since sources note interviewers are trained to detect rehearsed or shallow answers.
04
For software engineering candidates, deliberately practice dynamic programming and graph traversal problems, and write fully runnable code (not pseudocode) since Airbnb's live coding rounds are commonly reported as testing against real test cases.
05
Ask your recruiter directly whether your loop includes a live code-review round: multiple 2024-2026 reports describe Airbnb adding a round where you critique someone else's pull-request-style code instead of a second from-scratch coding round. If it's on your loop, practice reading unfamiliar code fast, calling out logic bugs before style nits, and narrating your reasoning out loud the way you would in a real PR review.
06
For system design rounds, start by clarifying product-specific ambiguity (e.g., is booking global vs. regional, is instant booking supported, how are cancellations handled) before diving into architecture; interviewers reportedly value this clarification step highly given Airbnb's marketplace complexity.
07
For PM candidates, practice structuring answers around Airbnb's two-sided marketplace dynamics (host vs. guest trade-offs, trust and safety) rather than generic product-sense frameworks, and rehearse presenting a take-home case study concisely, since a dedicated presentation-and-defense round is a distinctive part of the loop.
08
Treat 'Why Airbnb?' as a serious, recurring question rather than an icebreaker; be ready to connect your motivation concretely to the mission ('create a world where anyone can belong anywhere') rather than giving a generic answer.
04 / The research
Where this page comes from.
Compiled from public sources across 16 sites. Airbnb's own page is among them: careers.airbnb.com/faq.
- sites
- 16
- coaching and prep guides
- 21
- candidate reports and forums
- 8
- Airbnb's own pages
- 1
Source composition
Where the research comes from
Grouped by the kind of site that published each source: Airbnb's own domain, candidate forums, and everything else.
- Coaching and prep guides21
- Candidate reports and forums8
- Airbnb's own pages1
05 / The questions
Reported questions, by category.
Showing questions for
Roles are grouped by the category each question fits, not by the source.
Coding / Data Structures & Algorithms
(Software Engineer)
9 questions
Two Sum and its variants (e.g., return all unique combinations summing to a target)
Tests hash-map pair lookup, extending to backtracking with deduplication for combination-sum variants.
Reverse a linked list
Tests pointer manipulation; interviewers expect the iterative three-pointer version and clean null handling.
Design a file system that lets you create new paths and associate values with them
Tests trie or nested hash-map modeling of paths, with validation when parent paths are missing.
Design an iterator to flatten a nested/2D vector, supporting next() and hasNext()
Tests iterator state management; the insight is lazily advancing to the next valid element in hasNext().
Find the smallest number greater than a given number p that does not contain '11' in its binary representation
Bit-manipulation puzzle; reason about the binary digit constraint directly rather than brute-force incrementing.
Dynamic programming problems; multiple recent candidate reports specifically flag DP as harder and more frequent at Airbnb than at peer companies
Tests dynamic programming: state definition and transitions; candidate reports flag DP as unusually frequent here.
Graph traversal problems (e.g., shortest path / connectivity style questions)
Tests BFS/DFS mechanics for shortest-path and connectivity questions, including visited-set discipline.
General array and string manipulation, sorting, and searching problems, often framed as 'design and simulation' (build a class/API with state transitions) rather than pure algorithmic puzzles
Tests building a small stateful class or API cleanly, not just puzzle solving; code structure is graded.
Live code-review exercise (reported since around 2024, increasingly common but not yet universal): given realistic pull-request-style code, find logic bugs first, then flag style/maintainability issues and communicate the feedback clearly, graded as a distinct skill from writing new code
Tests code reading: find logic bugs first, then style and maintainability issues, and deliver the feedback clearly.
Reported problems, listed so you know what to expect. Practice them in your own editor or on the platform you prefer; SupaCV's practice mode coaches how you talk through them.
System Design
(Software Engineer, mid-to-senior)
8 questions
Design a reservation/booking system for Airbnb (property search, booking, cancellation, payment integration)
System design: inventory consistency, double-booking prevention, payment integration, and cancellation flow.
Design Airbnb's search and ranking system
System design: indexing, geo search, ranking signals, and caching for read-heavy query traffic.
Design a dynamic pricing system for listings
System design: signal pipelines feeding a pricing engine, update freshness, and fallbacks when data is stale.
Design a host-guest messaging system (real-time messaging infrastructure)
System design: real-time delivery via WebSockets or push, message ordering, and offline sync.
Design a reviews system
System design: write path with moderation, rating aggregation, and read-heavy caching.
Design a fraud-detection system for fake listings or suspicious booking patterns
System design: signal collection, rules plus model scoring, and the precision-recall tradeoff on blocking actions.
Design a generic rate limiter
System design staple: token bucket versus sliding window and distributed counter consistency.
Follow-up/failure-mode probing is common regardless of prompt, e.g., 'what happens if the payment service times out mid-booking?' or 'what if the search index is stale?'
Reported problems, listed so you know what to expect. Practice them in your own editor or on the platform you prefer; SupaCV's practice mode coaches how you talk through them.
Product Sense & Execution
(Product Manager)
6 questions
Name three common problems guests have with their listings/houses and what Airbnb could do to improve them
What are three products you really like, why do you like them, and what would you improve?
Design or improve a specific Airbnb feature for either the host or guest side, explicitly addressing trust and safety trade-offs
Walk through how you would define success metrics for a new or existing Airbnb feature (metrics deep-dive style question)
Present and defend a take-home case study (candidates typically receive a 2-3 page prompt roughly a week before the onsite and must present recommendations live)
How would you prioritize a roadmap when host and guest incentives are in tension (two-sided marketplace trade-off questions)
SQL, Statistics & Analytics
(Data Scientist / Data Analyst)
6 questions
Advanced SQL problems involving window functions, complex joins, and CTEs over large/messy datasets
Tests window functions, multi-step joins, and CTEs over large or messy datasets.
A/B testing design and interpretation questions (e.g., how would you test a proposed pricing or ranking change?)
Tests experiment design: randomization unit, metric choice, power, and interference in a two-sided marketplace.
Probability and statistics fundamentals applied to marketplace/booking scenarios
Tests probability and statistics fundamentals applied to booking scenarios, such as distributions and expected values.
Causal inference questions relevant to two-sided marketplace effects
Tests causal reasoning beyond A/B tests: confounding, network effects, and marketplace-level interference.
Open-ended business-case analysis: given a dataset, identify 2-3 recommended product changes and rank them by estimated business impact
Tests end-to-end analysis: explore a dataset, propose 2-3 product changes, and rank them by estimated impact.
Research-oriented deep dive on a past project, followed by an open-ended problem to reason through live
Tests depth on your own past work, then live structured reasoning on a fresh open-ended problem.
Reported problems, listed so you know what to expect. Practice them in your own editor or on the platform you prefer; SupaCV's practice mode coaches how you talk through them.
Every role
Core Values / Behavioral
(all roles)
8 questions
Tell me about a time you built something great from scratch
What is something you wanted to accomplish in the last year that you haven't accomplished yet?
Tell me about a time you were part of a community (including volunteer or non-work examples); multiple independent sources flag this community/belonging angle as a distinctive Airbnb curveball
Tell me about a time you made a mistake: what did you do about it?
Tell me about a decision you made based on instinct rather than data
Tell me about a time you worked on a project with a tight deadline
Describe a situation where you went above and beyond your job description
Why Airbnb? Expect this to be asked more pointedly and more than once compared to peer companies
Your next step
Interviewing at Airbnb?
Make sure your resume gets you to the first round.
Practicing for Airbnb against your resume is in Interview Prep on Career.
Common questions
Quick answers.
How many stages are in Airbnb's interview process?
Airbnb has 7 stages, set out in The process.
What framework does Airbnb use to evaluate candidates?
Airbnb evaluates candidates against Airbnb Core Values, set out in What Airbnb scores.
What kinds of questions does Airbnb ask?
Airbnb's questions fall into 5 categories, grouped in The questions.
How reliable is this Airbnb interview playbook?
It is compiled from public sources, and the evidence is in The research.
Sources (30)
Every public source this page was compiled from. Links open in a new tab.
16 sites, by sources
- teamblind.com4
- glassdoor.com4
- hellointerview.com3
- tryexponent.com3
- interviewquery.com3
- prepfully.com3
- igotanoffer.com1
- cviprep.withairbnb.com1
- levels.fyi1
- careers.airbnb.com1
- ophyai.com1
- interviewkickstart.com1
- datainterview.com1
- stratascratch.com1
- joinleland.com1
- interviewing.io1
- 01igotanoffer.com/blogs/tech/airbnb-software-engineer-interview
- 02cviprep.withairbnb.com
- 03teamblind.com/post/airbnb-core-values-interview-08xmr8ya
- 04teamblind.com/post/airbnb-swe-interview-breakdown-the-dp-questions-t…
- 05teamblind.com/post/Airbnb-Core-Values-interview-KvNUPJbB
- 06teamblind.com/post/Airbnb-Core-Values-Interview--How-to-Prep-CZSqFrhb
- 07levels.fyi/companies/airbnb/culture
- 08glassdoor.com/Interview/Airbnb-Interview-Questions-E391850.htm
- 09glassdoor.com/Interview/Airbnb-Software-Engineer-Interview-Questions…
- 10glassdoor.com/Interview/Airbnb-Data-Scientist-Interview-Questions-EI…
- 11glassdoor.com/Interview/Airbnb-Product-Manager-Interview-Questions-E…
- 12careers.airbnb.com/faq
- 13hellointerview.com/guides/airbnb/g9
- 14hellointerview.com/guides/airbnb/g8
- 15hellointerview.com/community/questions/airbnb-reservations-api/cm755yj2y0…
- 16tryexponent.com/guides/airbnb-software-engineer-interview
- 17tryexponent.com/blog/airbnb-interview-process
- 18tryexponent.com/guides/airbnb-pm-interview
- 19interviewquery.com/interview-guides/airbnb
- 20interviewquery.com/interview-guides/airbnb-product-manager
- 21interviewquery.com/interview-guides/airbnb-data-scientist
- 22prepfully.com/interview-guides/airbnb-software-engineer
- 23prepfully.com/interview-guides/airbnb-product-manager
- 24prepfully.com/interview-guides/the-ultimate-airbnb-data-scientist-in…
- 25ophyai.com/blog/company-guides/airbnb-interview-guide
- 26interviewkickstart.com/blogs/companies/airbnb-software-engineer-interview-pro…
- 27datainterview.com/blog/airbnb-data-scientist-interview
- 28stratascratch.com/blog/airbnb-data-scientist-interview-questions
- 29joinleland.com/library/a/airbnb-product-manager-interview
- 30interviewing.io/airbnb-interview-questions
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How similar companies interview
Compare Airbnb's process with other Big Tech companies in this playbook: