Just finished the full Booking.com software engineer interview process and wanted to write up something more detailed than the two-line glassdoor reviews I was working off.
Timeline: recruiter reached out on LinkedIn, first call about two weeks later, then around three weeks to schedule the full loop. Total from first contact to offer was about six weeks.
The rounds (senior SWE role, Amsterdam-based team): Recruiter screen, 30 min, pretty standard. They really wanted to know if I was open to Amsterdam relocation or already based there. If you're remote-only this might be the end of the road. Technical phone screen, 45 min with an engineer. One coding problem, medium-ish difficulty. Leetcode-style but not a hard. They gave me time to explain my approach before I started typing. The interviewer was engaged, not stone-faced. Full onsite (virtual in my case), split into four sessions across one day: Two coding rounds (again, medium difficulty, one on graphs, one on strings/arrays) One system design round (1 hour, design a hotel availability and search service, surprise surprise) One behavioral round focused on cross-team collaboration and ownership
The coding rounds felt straightforward for senior-level. I'd say the system design is where they actually differentiate candidates. More on that in a separate post.
The behavioral round was competency-based in the UK style: "tell me about a time when..." for every question, no hypotheticals. Booking is Dutch/UK culture-influenced so they take the structured behavioral interview seriously.
Debrief: recruiter called two days after the loop. Offer came through about a week later.
Things I wish I'd known: they care a lot about your ability to work with product and data teams. At least two of my behavioral questions touched on cross-functional situations, not just eng-to-eng ones. Frame your answers accordingly.
Happy to answer questions about specifics.