Finished my Spotify frontend engineer interview loop last month, got an offer, joining in a few weeks. Posting the breakdown because the info online was thin.
My process: recruiter call, 45-min technical screen, then 5-round onsite (2 coding, 1 system design, 1 cross-functional/behavioral, 1 with hiring manager). The role was for a mid-level position on one of the web client teams.
Technical phone screen: A live coding problem in Coderpad. JavaScript focused. The problem was about DOM manipulation and event handling, which I wasn't expecting at all. Not a LeetCode-style algo problem. Know your browser APIs, know how event bubbling works, know how to debounce. That kind of thing.
Onsite coding rounds: One was more algo-ish (trees, BFS), one was frontend-specific. The frontend one had me build a mini component from scratch. No framework, vanilla JS. They cared a lot about accessibility semantics and keyboard navigation. I spent maybe 20 minutes writing the solution and 15 minutes discussing how I'd test it and what accessibility concerns existed.
System design: I was asked to design a real-time collaborative playlist feature. They wanted to hear about state sync, conflict resolution, optimistic updates on the client. Basically frontend system design, which is its own thing from backend system design. Prepare for this specifically if you're applying for web roles.
Behavioral / cross-functional: Heavy on "tell me about a time you pushed back on a product decision" and "describe how you work with designers." Spotify's product and design teams are genuinely influential, so the expectation is that eng participates in product thinking.
Leveling: I came in as a mid-level IC (they call it Squad Engineer or something similar in some orgs). The bar felt fair. They didn't try to trick me, they seemed to want to understand how I actually think.
Any questions, happy to answer.