just wrapped up oracle's online assessment for a backend role. sharing what the format actually looks like because the prep resources out there are weirdly vague for such a big company.
the OA is on HackerRank. two coding problems, 90 minutes total. no webcam proctoring at least for the first stage.
problem difficulty: both were medium-level on the LeetCode scale. one was a graph problem (find shortest path with some constraint on edge weights), one was an array/sliding window thing. nothing that would make you sweat if you've done 3-4 weeks of serious prep. no dp that required exotic state compression or anything.
what people get wrong: the time limit is tighter than it looks. 90 min for two mediums sounds generous but oracle's test cases are extensive. i had a working O(n log n) solution for problem 1 but two edge cases i hadn't thought of (empty input, duplicate elements) failed and i spent 20 min debugging before moving on. optimize for correctness first.
after the OA: recruiter reached out about 6 days later. they don't give you a score or breakdown, just "you passed" or nothing. i passed and got scheduled for a phone screen.
the live coding interview (after OA and phone screen) was one 45-minute problem with a shared IDE, no autocomplete. problem was a string manipulation question, maybe easy-medium. the interviewer wasn't coding with me, just watching and asking occasional questions. they cared a lot about how i communicated: did i explain what i was about to do before i did it, did i check edge cases out loud.
if you're targeting oracle in 2026, just grind leetcode mediums and make sure you're comfortable talking through your approach before typing. that's genuinely 80% of it.