I applied through an employee referral. I interviewed at Booking.com (Amsterdam)
Interview
Interviewed by phone and needed first to pass HackerRank test (average complexity). You should be focused here at good knowledge of some language (I used c++) and good understanding basic data structures (map/hash_map/vector, etc). After successful passing the test I was invited onsite. There were 3 interviews - coding, system design and free talking about prior experience / booking business awareness. At coding part onsite to be successful you should be aware of basic algorithms and data structures with focus at system scalability. At system design part I was asked to design small feature for Booking portal. It's totally doable if you do what you are asked for and ask questions, e.g. what amount of data you should process, can the processing be background or it should be realtime, etc.
I had great experience and fun, therefore recommend applying to Booking. I had no contract due to not passing system design part.
I applied through a staffing agency. I interviewed at Booking.com (Amsterdam) in Jun 2026
Interview
Two stages:
- Technical: consisted of two parts. The first one was a hands-on coding exercise where I had to solve a problem, and the second one was focused on system design.
- Culture fit
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
They asked about idempotency, retry mechanisms, inter-process communication, observability, reliability, and scalability.
I applied through a recruiter. I interviewed at Booking.com
Interview
I recently interviewed with Booking.com for a software engineer role. The process was well-organized and took about 3–4 weeks. It started with an online assessment on HackerRank with a couple of LeetCode medium problems. That was followed by a technical screen where I did live coding and discussed basic algorithms. The final round was a full day of back-to-back sessions: algorithmic coding, system design (something like designing a hotel availability checker), a behavioral round using STAR questions, and a chat with a manager about company values. The interviewers were professional and friendly, and the problems felt relevant to Booking's actual business. On the downside, some coding rounds felt repetitive, and I didn't get much feedback after being rejected. Overall, it was a fair but challenging process. My advice: practice medium-level array and hash map problems, review basic system design, and have solid STAR stories ready. I'd rate it 4 out of 5 stars and would recommend it to other engineers.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Design a hotel search and availability system that returns available rooms for a given date range and can handle high traffic.
I applied online. I interviewed at Booking.com (Amsterdam)
Interview
The whole process is composed of about 5 stages. Initial interview, then technical interview, followed by a “ownership” interview, then by a team-fit check interview. The initial interview is done by recruiters not based in the Netherlands (at least my experience) and felt as if the role had already been filled by the time I took it. Was answered with a “I’m doing good, hope you are doing good too. So this interview…” to “Hi, nice to meet you! How are you?”. It simply felt as if they didn’t want to be there and there was 0 engagement.