did the Adobe full onsite (virtual) in March 2026 for a senior platform engineer role. five rounds back-to-back on a Thursday. here's the complete rundown.
the five rounds coding round 1 (45 min): algorithm, medium difficulty. mine was a graph problem. explained above in the OA thread but this one was live. coding round 2 (45 min): design/implementation hybrid. I had to design a simple rate limiter and then actually code a core piece of it. less about elegance, more about making it work and talking through the design first. system design (60 min): collaborative doc editing, as described in the other thread. this is the real differentiator round for senior candidates. behavioral (45 min): two interviewers. lots of cross-team collaboration questions, one leadership/failure question, one "tell us about impact" question. felt very much like they were calibrating L5 vs L6. hiring manager chat (30 min): not really evaluative, more "here's the team, here's what you'd work on, do you have questions". but I'd still prepare questions. it shapes how they close you.
logistics all virtual via Zoom with CoderPad for coding. the rounds are 10-15 minutes apart. they were punctual. I had water and took notes between rounds, nobody cared.
where people wash out from what I heard through the recruiter debrief: most senior candidates fail on either system design depth or behavioral specificity. technical fundamentals rarely fail people at senior level, it's the communication layer.
feedback / debrief timeline I got recruiter contact 4 business days after the onsite. they didn't give detailed feedback but the recruiter was willing to say which areas were strong vs which needed more depth. that's more than a lot of companies give you.
overall impression Adobe runs a tighter process than I expected. not a lot of chaos. the interviewers mostly came prepared with their questions. I've had worse-organized onsites at companies with better reputations.