Spotify's hiring process tends to be thorough but moves faster than most FAANG-adjacent companies once you're in the loop. Expect 4-6 rounds depending on level: typically a recruiter screen, a technical phone screen or take-home, then a virtual on-site with coding, system design, and behavioral interviews. For senior and staff roles, system design carries a lot of weight. They're genuinely interested in how you think about scale and audio/streaming infrastructure, but they also care about product sensibility.
Behavioral interviews at Spotify tend to cluster around their core principles: they'll ask about ownership, moving fast, and navigating ambiguity. 'How have you worked with a cross-functional team to ship something under pressure?' is a very Spotify kind of question. They're big on collaborative, band-style culture (you'll hear the band metaphor a lot internally), so how you talk about working with others matters.
Comp has become more competitive in the last two years, especially for ML and backend roles with streaming infrastructure experience. Stockholm-based offers are structured differently from US roles, so clarify geography early.
Read the full Primly report: /community/behavioral-interview-questions/spotify
(Posted by Primly Team. Based on community-sourced reports and publicly available hiring information.)