2025–2026 Notion Software Engineer and Other Roles OA / Interviews (Hiring Level Not Reported): 20 Experiences

None of these 20 reports says whether the candidate was an intern, a new grad, or an experienced hire. Fifteen are for software engineering, and they hold most of the named Notion questions: a nested to-do list, a text document with undo and redo, a document store, a React menu, and calendar and task-queue designs.

Coverage: Notion roles where the hiring level isn't given: Software Engineer (15 reports, including one Software Developer, one candidate placed with the Developer Experience team, one in India, and one in Israel), Solutions Architect, Quality Engineer, Data Engineer, Software Engineer (Frontend), and iOS. Online assessments, take-homes, recruiter and HR screens, technical and phone screens, debugging rounds, onsites, values interviews, and reference checks. San Francisco, New York, the U.S., India, and Israel; many reports give no location. Reports from January 2025 to October 2026.

Intern reports are in our Notion intern roundup, new grads are in our Notion new grad roundup, and experienced hires are in our experienced Notion roundup.

Each role has its own section below, newest first:

• Software Engineer: 15 reports (01–15), October 2026 back to January 2025.
• Solutions Architect: 1 report (16), September 2026.
• Quality Engineer: 1 report (17), July 2026.
• Data Engineer: 1 report (18), February 2026.
• Software Engineer, Frontend: 1 report (19), June 2025.
• iOS engineer: 1 report (20), January 2025.

Software Engineer

What came up

Small product features built in code came up most: to-do lists, text with undo and redo, document classes, and one feature to build with object-oriented code. Behavioral and motivation questions were close behind.

Single reports mention a take-home and a debugging round (01), an online assessment (04), an AI-enabled interview (06), React coding (08), pair programming (12), and LeetCode medium and hard questions (13). Report 15 shares no topic at all. A candidate can appear in more than one row.

Questions we found

Coding

Project Coding

System Design

Behavioral (BQ)

15 detailed candidate timelines, loops, and screens

01: Take-home, debugging, and an OOP phone screen

Report date: Oct 16, 2026 · Role: Software Engineer · Location: San Francisco · Result: No offer

Take-home

1. Build a feature similar to one Notion already has. The feature wasn't named.

After passing the take-home

1. A debugging round: find and diagnose bugs in an existing codebase.
2. A phone screen that felt like a LeetCode round but asked the candidate to build a feature with object-oriented code. The feature wasn't described.

The report doesn't say which round ended the process.

02: A lists question on the phone screen, then an offer

Report date: Sep 2, 2026 · Role: Software Engineer · Result: Offer, declined

Recruiter screen

1. A Notion employee referred the candidate; a recruiter got in touch some weeks afterward.

Technical phone screen

1. A Notion-related question about building lists functionality. The report gives no more detail; FastPrep tracks it under Nested Todo List.

Questions the candidate listed

1. Why Notion? (practice)
2. What do you want to do next? (practice)

03: A to-do list with insert-anywhere and nesting

Report date: Aug 28, 2026 · Role: Software Engineer · Location: San Francisco · Result: No offer

The candidate came in through a recruiter, and it was two weeks from start to finish.

Coding interview (50 minutes)

1. Build a bulleted to-do list. New items can go in at any position, and items can be nested under a bullet (Nested Todo List).

The interviewers were friendly and encouraging the whole way through.

04: A recruiter call, then an online test

Report date: May 4, 2026 · Role: Software Developer · Result: No offer

Process

1. Applied through LinkedIn with no referral.
2. Recruiter call about logistics. The recruiter was understanding and kind.
3. Online assessment. Its content wasn't described.

05: A core values interview after the onsite

Report date: Apr 6, 2026 · Role: Software Engineer · Result: Not posted

Onsite

1. Finished. The rounds weren't described.

Core values interview

1. After the onsite the candidate was told about one more interview, on Notion's core values. They had thought the onsite was the end and weren't sure whether this round was a formality.

Reference checks

1. About ten days later the candidate said reference checks were underway and a decision was due the following week.

06: Practical rounds and an AI-enabled interview

Report date: Apr 4, 2026 · Role: Software Engineer · Location: New York · Result: Offer, accepted

An employee referred the candidate, and it was four weeks from start to finish.

Technical screen, onsite, and values interview

1. All practical, with no LeetCode-style problems. Challenging but fair.

AI-enabled interview

1. A newer round that needed a good working knowledge of AI coding tools such as Claude Code and Cursor. The task wasn't described.

Each round's result came within two or three business days.

07: Asked about AI tools

Report date: Jan 29, 2026 · Role: Software Engineer · Location: New York · Result: No offer

The candidate came in through a recruiter, and it was five weeks from start to finish. The recruiter answered within a day or two after every round, and every interviewer was friendly.

Question the candidate listed

1. Which AI tools have you used? (practice)

After the rejection, Notion sent a form asking for feedback on its interview process.

08: React menu, calendar UI, a string class, and a retro

Report date: Dec 17, 2025 · Role: Software Engineer · Result: Offer, declined

The candidate applied online; the process took two weeks. They listed four parts under the heading of the tech screen, so it isn't clear whether these were one round or several.

1. A React challenge to make a Notion menu component (Build a Menu Component for Notion).
2. Frontend system design for a calendar UI (Design Calendar Client State and Recurrence).
3. A JavaScript class for string manipulation. There's no more detail; FastPrep tracks it under Text Document History.
4. A behavioral screen built around a retrospective of a past project, used to decide the team (practice).

09: Developer Experience team, onsite stopped halfway

Report date: Nov 4, 2025 · Role: Software Engineer, Developer Experience team · Location: United States · Result: No offer

A referral put the candidate in the general pool, and the recruiter placed them with the Developer Experience team. That role wanted TypeScript, which the candidate didn't have.

Phone screen

1. Passed with positive feedback. Then two weeks of silence, until the candidate's second follow-up.

Hiring-manager chat

1. The manager said this chat should have come before the phone screen. The manager was engaged, wasn't bothered by the missing TypeScript, and said the onsite would go ahead.

Virtual onsite

1. After two of the four rounds, and less than an hour later, the candidate was told neither score was a pass. The other two rounds were cancelled. The candidate felt both interviewers were disengaged.

Question the candidate listed

1. Improve the task queue system (Design an Adaptive Task Decomposition Queue). The report doesn't say which round it came from.

10: An HR screen about experience, projects, and Notion itself

Report date: Aug 1, 2025 · Role: Software Engineer · Location: San Francisco · Result: No offer

HR screen

1. Previous experience (practice).
2. Key projects (practice).
3. Why Notion (practice).
4. A check on how well the candidate understood Notion as a product, plus an outline of the interview process.

11: Undo and redo, a nested to-do list, and a calendar design

Report date: Jun 6, 2025 · Role: Software Engineer · Result: No hire

The candidate applied on LinkedIn. A recruiter emailed and then walked through the rounds on a Zoom call.

Screening round (about 40–45 minutes)

1. An easy-to-medium string problem with undo and redo operations (Text Document History). The candidate finished in about 35 minutes.

The next week the recruiter set up two more rounds on the same day.

DSA round (product-style rather than LeetCode)

1. Keep a to-do checklist where users can insert an item anywhere. The candidate used a Java ArrayList with positional insert and handled the edge cases.
2. Follow-up: support nested items (Nested Todo List). The candidate proposed tracking parent-to-child indexes to move through the tree. The interviewer hinted at a simpler way to navigate, which the candidate didn't find, and let them continue with their own approach. Afterwards the candidate thought that passing the child node itself, plus an insert index, might have been the simpler way, but they didn't raise it in the interview.

System design

1. Design a calendar application (Design a Calendar Search and Sync Platform). The candidate worked through requirements (functional and non-functional), rough capacity numbers, the main entities, the APIs, a block diagram, and a few deep dives.
2. The candidate thinks one weak spot was the extra tables: they fed them through a separate stream-based path from the main service rather than relying on change data capture (CDC). The interviewer didn't seem convinced and asked few follow-up questions.

All rounds were done within about a week. No feedback came with the decision.

12: SOLID, a database-flavored design round, and pair programming

Report date: Jun 1, 2025 · Role: Software Engineer · Location: India · Result: No offer (no reply)

Screening interview

1. A coding question the candidate called fairly simple, graded mostly on clean code and SOLID principles.

System design

1. Mostly about modeling a database and writing SQL against the stated requirements. The domain wasn't described.

Pair programming

1. A coding session with a follow-up, judged on readability, correctness, and trade-offs.

The interviewers gave positive signals throughout. Notion's head recruiter said a decision would come that week; more than a month later the candidate still hadn't heard anything.

13: LeetCode medium and hard, plus class projects

Report date: May 6, 2025 · Role: Software Engineer · Location: Israel · Result: No offer

Interviews

1. Several LeetCode-style questions at medium and hard difficulty. None were named.
2. Questions about the candidate's undergraduate class projects, to check how well they understood their own work (practice).

14: A document class close to the prep material

Report date: Apr 1, 2025 · Role: Software Engineer · Location: United States · Result: No offer

Recruiter call

1. An introductory call.

Technical screen with an engineer

1. Write classes and methods for managing documents (Versioned Document Store). The candidate called it a system design coding question. It was very close to what the recruiter's prep documents had described.

The candidate solved it with every test case passing, yet didn't advance. A request for feedback got no reply.

15: Positive feedback, then a rejection

Report date: Jan 1, 2025 · Role: Software Engineer · Location: United States · Result: No offer

Process

1. Recruiter screen.
2. Technical screen.
3. Onsite.

Candidates had to sign an NDA. The recruiter passed on nothing but positive feedback and then said Notion had chosen someone else. No questions were shared.

Patterns across these reports

1. Small product features, built with classes. Six reports describe this kind of task: a to-do list (02, 03, 11), text editing with undo and redo (08, 11), document classes (14), and an object-oriented feature (01). Report 13 is the exception, with LeetCode medium and hard questions.

2. The to-do list grows in steps. Reports 03 and 11 both start with inserting items anywhere in a list and then add nesting. Report 02 names only a lists question on the phone screen.

3. Calendars in system design. Reports 08 and 11 both had a calendar design, but different ones: 08 was a frontend calendar UI and 11 a full calendar application.

4. Values after the onsite. Reports 05 and 06 both had a separate values interview after the onsite. Report 05 then moved on to reference checks.

5. Little feedback at the end. Reports 11, 12, 14 and 15 got no reason, or no reply at all, after doing well in at least one round by their own account.

Solutions Architect

One report. AI fluency was the main theme, even though this isn't an engineering role.

Questions we found

Behavioral (BQ)

1 detailed candidate timeline

16: Notion Agents for a customer's workflows

Report date: Sep 8, 2026 · Role: Solutions Architect · Result: No offer

Interviews

1. Strong emphasis on AI fluency, even for non-technical roles.
2. Explain how Notion Agents could make a customer's existing workflows much better (practice).

Some of the interviewers changed during the process because of management turnover. Everyone the candidate met was fair and kind.

Quality Engineer

One report: four rounds covering manual testing, automation, coding, and experience, plus a culture-fit interview.

Questions we found

Coding

1 detailed candidate timeline

17: Manual, automation, coding, and a manager

Report date: Jul 19, 2026 · Role: Quality Engineer · Result: Offer, accepted

The process took three weeks.

1. Round 1: manual testing.
2. Round 2: automation.
3. Round 3: coding, with two questions on arrays.
4. Round 4: a manager interview about the candidate's experience.
5. A culture-fit interview with the site lead.

Data Engineer

One report: a long loop with a screen, three coding rounds, a hiring-manager round, and a final panel.

Questions we found

SQL and data

1 detailed candidate timeline

18: Three coding rounds on SQL and Python

Report date: Feb 28, 2026 · Role: Data Engineer · Result: No offer

The candidate applied through a recruiter.

1. Screening round.
2. Three coding rounds, which tested how well the candidate could use SQL and Python.
3. Hiring-manager round.
4. Final panel.

The candidate found it long but thought well of the company.

Software Engineer, Frontend

One report: React coding on the screen and in the onsite, plus full-stack system design and an algorithms round.

Questions we found

Coding

1 detailed candidate timeline

19: Frontend coding, full-stack design, and an algorithms round

Report date: Jun 17, 2025 · Role: Software Engineer, Frontend · Location: New York · Result: No offer

Technical screen

1. A frontend-heavy coding interview in React.

Onsite

1. Frontend coding interview.
2. Manager interview.
3. Full-stack system design.
4. Data structures and algorithms coding interview.

None of the tasks were described.

iOS engineer

One report: a small app to build.

Questions we found

Project Coding

1 detailed candidate timeline

20: Built the app, still rejected

Report date: Jan 16, 2025 · Role: iOS engineer · Result: Rejected

Interview

1. Build a small app. The candidate found it easy and finished it, but was rejected.

Keep practicing

• Coding problems from these reports: Nested Todo List (reports 02, 03, 11), Text Document History (08, 11), and Versioned Document Store (14). More are in the Notion coding question bank (sign-in needed).
• React project: Build a Menu Component for Notion from report 08, plus the other Notion projects in the project coding bank (sign-in needed).
• System design: Design Calendar Client State and Recurrence (08), Design an Adaptive Task Decomposition Queue (09), and Design a Calendar Search and Sync Platform (11), plus the Notion system design bank (sign-in needed).
• SQL and data: the Notion SQL and pandas bank (sign-in needed).
• Behavioral: the Notion behavioral question bank holds every prompt linked above (sign-in needed).
• Everything Notion in one place: the Notion interview page and Notion hiring insights.
• More firsthand reports: the Experience feed.

Sources: Anywhere useful interview info can be found.