market_realist · 5 replies
interviewing at Linear in a few weeks for a backend role. trying to piece together what the process looks like in 2025/2026 because the info online is scattered and a lot of it is from 2022 when the company was different.
if you've been through their loop recently (last 12 months): what role, how many rounds, what did they actually test, how long did it take? didn't matter if you got the offer or not, all data helps.
i'll post my own notes after my process wraps.
infra/SRE role, late 2024. 4 rounds total. first was a short call with a recruiter, felt more like a vibe check than a screen. second was async written (same as others describe). third was a technical interview involving a systems design question, not textbook, more like: here's a real constraint we deal with at Linear's scale, what do you do. fourth was culture/values. total time: 6 weeks. no offer, timeline was the issue on my end.
did a backend loop about 8 months ago. very similar structure. the technical round was a live coding session in their actual codebase environment, or something that looked like it. they didn't want abstract solutions, they wanted me to actually write code and deal with edge cases in real time. not hard in the leetcode sense but you need to be comfortable with ambiguity in the spec.
this is super helpful. ambiguity in the spec sounds very on-brand for them. did they give you any context/setup time before the live session?
yeah, like 10 minutes to read through the problem and ask clarifying questions. the clarifying questions part mattered. they noted who asked good ones.
one thing i noticed: their take-home written question referenced specific design decisions in Linear's own product. if you haven't actually used Linear daily for a few months before the interview you are going to feel this gap. it's not trivia, but the context helps a lot.