LinkedIn Staff Software Engineer Interview: Two Onsite Loops and a Final Reject
Updated July 17, 2026
This write-up covers a Staff Software Engineer loop at LinkedIn's Sunnyvale office, starting with a note that the candidate was, at the time of posting, working as a Senior Staff or Principal Software Engineer elsewhere in the San Francisco area. The loop itself opened with two phone interviews — a background and leadership discussion, then a separate technical screen — before moving to a six-round onsite loop.
Partway through, the hiring committee decided the candidate did not clear the bar for the Staff level, and instead of an outright rejection, the candidate was invited back for a second, shorter onsite loop evaluated against the Senior Software Engineer level. That second loop also ended without an offer, with the recruiter describing the candidate as close to the bar but not quite there, and suggesting another attempt at the Staff level the following year.
How the process went
Phone interviews
Two 60-minute phone interviews for the Staff Software Engineer role: a background and leadership discussion, followed by a separate technical phone screen with two coding problems.
Onsite loop (Staff Software Engineer)
Six 60-minute onsite rounds: a host manager conversation, a coding and algorithm round, a lunch interview, a staff craftsmanship round, a system design round, and a coding implementation round.
Interim feedback
The hiring committee did not consider the candidate a match for the Staff Software Engineer level, and invited the candidate back for an additional onsite loop evaluated against the Senior Software Engineer level instead.
Follow-up onsite loop (Senior Software Engineer)
Two additional 60-minute onsite rounds: a system design round and a coding round with two problems.
Final decision
The recruiter called about two days after the follow-up loop to report that the hiring committee decided not to move forward, describing the candidate as close to the bar, and mentioned the candidate's LinkedIn profile had no recommendations. The candidate was encouraged to try again for the Staff Software Engineer level the following year.
Staff / Background Interview (Phone)
Leadership and background discussion · 60 minutes
- The difference between a Software Engineer and a Senior/Staff Software Engineer role, and how that transition typically happens.
- A conflict-resolution question about handling a disagreement with a peer.
- A high-level system design discussion about breaking a single monolithic application into separate components.
- A craftsmanship discussion centered on challenges faced and the work the candidate was most proud of.
The candidate's own tip: relate answers to real examples from personal experience for each background question.
Technical Phone Screen
Coding · 60 minutes
- Evaluate Reverse Polish Notation (LeetCode #150, Medium).
- Two Sum III - Data Structure Design (LeetCode #170, Easy), with a follow-up on how the design would need to change to support three-sum lookups, discussed verbally without an implementation.
The candidate's own tip: talk through all possible approaches out loud and explain why the implemented one was chosen.
Onsite (Staff loop) — Host Manager Round
Manager conversation and system design scenarios · 60 minutes
- The host manager described their own role, including whether they handle hiring and firing decisions, their day-to-day activities, and how much they personally code.
- Questions about the team's current web architecture and at what point the manager gets involved in technical decisions.
- System design discussion around scenarios such as two companies merging their systems and handling a migration.
Onsite (Staff loop) — Coding + Algorithm
Coding · 60 minutes
- A problem the candidate described as finding the minimum product across two sorted arrays, closest in shape to LeetCode's 'Find K Pairs with Smallest Sums,' and rated by the candidate as LeetCode Hard.
Onsite (Staff loop) — Lunch Interview
Informal conversation, factored into feedback · 60 minutes
- The interviewer discussed their own role and a side project, along with LinkedIn's platform history described as '1.0, 2.0, 3.0' and its economic graph.
- Questions about LinkedIn's culture and its framework for machine-learning opportunities.
- Questions about which other companies the candidate was interviewing with and what they wanted to do in a new role.
The candidate noted that feedback from this round was recorded and factored into the overall decision, despite its informal, conversational format.
Onsite (Staff loop) — Staff Craftsmanship
Engineering craftsmanship and mentoring · 60 minutes
- Questions on code quality, code review practices, and the trade-offs involved in code review.
- Examples of how the candidate had coached junior and senior engineers on craftsmanship.
- A decision-making example, plus trade-off discussions between scalability, performance, and quality, and between fixing performance issues versus shipping a new feature with business value.
Onsite (Staff loop) — System Design
System design · 60 minutes
- Design an API rate limiter.
The candidate's own tip: for this loop, be ready to explain the strategy and algorithm upfront and agree on it before coding.
Onsite (Staff loop) — Coding + Implementation
Coding · 60 minutes
- Implement a word justifier, equivalent to LeetCode's Text Justification problem and rated Hard by the candidate, including defining the input and output format.
Follow-up Onsite (Senior loop) — System Design
System design · 60 minutes
- Design a feature to surface a trending article on LinkedIn, building on an existing API that continuously writes a shared-article URN to a database.
Follow-up Onsite (Senior loop) — Coding
Coding · 60 minutes
- Find Leaves of Binary Tree (LeetCode, Medium).
- All O(1) Data Structure (LeetCode, Hard).
Key takeaways
- For staff-level background rounds, prepare concrete examples tied to leadership themes such as conflict resolution, mentoring, and the SE-to-Staff transition, rather than generic behavioral stories.
- Treat informal-feeling rounds, such as a lunch conversation, as part of the evaluation — this candidate's feedback for that round was recorded and factored into the decision.
- For staff-level system design and craftsmanship rounds, be ready to justify trade-offs (scalability versus performance versus quality, or fixing bugs versus shipping features) with real examples rather than abstract principles.
- A rejection at one level does not necessarily end the process — this candidate was invited to interview again at a lower level after the first loop, though that second loop also ended without an offer.
- Recruiter feedback can include non-technical factors — this candidate was told their LinkedIn profile had no recommendations, so profile completeness may be worth addressing before interviewing.
Practice a LinkedIn 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