Apple ICT2/3 Interview Experience: Seattle, 2020
Updated July 17, 2026
A candidate with six years of data engineering experience at a Canadian pension fund interviewed for an ICT2/3 role at Apple in Seattle in May 2020. The phone screen was skipped because the candidate was referred through TripleByte's fast-track program, so the exact level being evaluated was never confirmed — the candidate inferred ICT2/3 from the difficulty of the coding questions.
The virtual onsite ran six rounds in a single day, separated by a lunch break, and covered data-structure implementation, open-ended system design, object-oriented coding, a scoping exercise with a product manager, a probability-based coding problem, and a behavioral round with the hiring manager. The candidate received a rejection afterward and pointed to the system-design round and the probability coding problem as the likely weak points.
How the process went
Recruiting path
The candidate was referred through TripleByte's fast-track program, which meant the standard phone screen was skipped and the exact interview level was never explicitly confirmed.
Virtual onsite
Six rounds were scheduled across a single day with a one-hour lunch break in between, alternating between coding, design, cross-functional, and behavioral formats.
Result
The candidate received a rejection after the onsite.
Preparation
Roughly six months were spent on coding and algorithms, including about 483 LeetCode problems and 22 contests treated as mock interviews, about a week on system design shortly before the interview, and a couple of days rehearsing behavioral answers out loud.
Round 1 — Coding: Implement HashMap
Data structure design and follow-up reasoning · 1 hour
- Implement a HashMap from scratch (similar to LeetCode's Design HashMap).
The candidate implemented the map using an array of linked lists to handle collisions.
The interviewer asked follow-up questions on trade-offs, resizing strategy, and test coverage.
The candidate felt this round went well.
Round 2 — System Design: Find My Friends
Structuring an open-ended system design problem · 1 hour
- Design a location-sharing feature similar to Find My Friends.
The candidate started out disorganized and struggled to structure the design at first.
The interviewer asked clarifying follow-up questions that helped steer the discussion back on track.
The candidate believed this was one of the weaker rounds and a possible factor in the rejection.
Round 3 — Behavioral + Coding: Tic-Tac-Toe
Favorite-project discussion followed by object-oriented design and coding · 1 hour
- Describe your favorite project.
- Implement Tic-Tac-Toe (similar to LeetCode's Design Tic-Tac-Toe).
The favorite-project discussion ran long, leaving less time for the coding portion.
The candidate outlined classes such as Board, Player, and Game, then implemented the move-placement and winner-calculation methods due to time constraints.
The candidate felt this round went well.
Round 4 — Cross-functional: Product Delivery Scenario
Working with a product-manager interviewer on a delivery and scoping scenario · 45 minutes
- Describe a time you convinced a product manager to prioritize technical debt over a business request.
- Given a business request to add Rotten Tomatoes movie ratings to Siri search results, how would you break the work down and deliver it to production?
The interviewer for this round was a product manager rather than an engineer.
The candidate split the delivery plan into backend/data-sourcing, application-layer, and frontend phases that could each ship independently.
The candidate felt this round went well.
Round 5 — Resume Deep Dive + Coding: Random Number Generation
Resume and experience discussion followed by a probability-based coding problem · 1 hour
- Questions on opinions about code review practices and Agile delivery.
- Given a helper function that returns a random integer from 1 to 6, implement a function that returns a random integer from 1 to N (similar to LeetCode's Implement Rand10 Using Rand7).
The candidate struggled with the math-heavy problem and got stuck for a few minutes.
The interviewer simplified the helper to return a random double between 1 and 6 instead of an integer.
The candidate implemented the simplified version after several attempts but ran out of time for the original integer-based version.
The candidate considered this the weakest round and the most likely reason for the rejection.
Round 6 — Hiring Manager: Behavioral
Behavioral evaluation with the hiring manager · 45 minutes
- Describe a challenging project.
- Describe a situation where you did not meet a project timeline.
- Describe a prioritization discussion you had with product managers.
The candidate was unsure how this round was perceived.
Key takeaways
- Prepare a few flexible personal stories (favorite project, challenging project, why this company) — the same set of stories came up across several rounds in this loop.
- Practice structuring open-ended design questions out loud before diving into details; a slow, disorganized start was one of the weaker moments in this candidate's loop.
- For probability or randomness-style coding problems, rehearse the underlying math separately from general algorithm practice so you are less likely to get stuck under time pressure.
- When time runs short in a round, prioritize a working, simplified solution over an unfinished attempt at the original problem.
- Treat cross-functional rounds, such as one with a product manager, as a chance to show how you scope and phase delivery, not just technical depth.
Practice a Apple interview
Rehearse out loud against the kinds of questions in this story — with an AI interviewer that asks follow-ups.
Practice this interviewSource
The questions and process facts come from the candidate's public write-up, linked below. The retelling above is our own summary.
Candidate's public write-up on LeetCode Discuss