2025–2026 Notion Software Engineer Intern OA / Interviews: 6 Experiences

Five of these six reports are for the regular software engineering internship. Three of those five mention a round spent debugging existing code, and three describe coding that felt practical rather than LeetCode-style.

Coverage: Notion Software Engineer interns. Five reports are for the general internship (San Francisco, the U.S., Canada, and one with no location) and one is for the AI-focused Software Engineer intern track. Online assessments, take-homes, a recruiter call, live coding and debugging rounds, and hiring-manager interviews. Reports from August 2025 to June 2026.

New grad reports are in our Notion new grad roundup, experienced hires are in our experienced Notion roundup, and Notion reports that don't give a hiring level have their own roundup.

The two intern tracks are kept apart below:

• Software Engineer Intern: 5 reports (01–05), June 2026 back to September 2025.
• Software Engineer, AI intern: 1 report (06), August 2025.

Software Engineer Intern

What came up

Debugging and practical coding lead these five reports. Three candidates had a round about finding bugs in code they didn't write, and three said their coding rounds were closer to real work than to puzzle problems.

A candidate can appear in more than one row.

Questions we found

Project Coding (debugging)

Coding

Low-Level Design (LLD/OOD)

Behavioral (BQ)

5 detailed candidate timelines, loops, and screens

01: A mini Notion to debug

Report date: Jun 29, 2026 · Role: Software Engineer (Internship) · Location: San Francisco · Result: No offer

Application

1. Applied online. Each stage was followed quickly by an email about the next step.

Interviews

1. Find and fix bugs in a small, Notion-like app. FastPrep's practice version is Debug a Mini Notion App.
2. Practical coding questions with a system-design flavor. The candidate didn't say what they were.

The interviewers were kind. The candidate wished they had received some feedback after the rejection.

02: Online test, take-home, then two different coding rounds

Report date: Apr 26, 2026 · Role: Software Engineer (Internship) · Result: Offer, accepted

Process

1. Online assessment.
2. Take-home.
3. Two coding rounds: one was debugging existing code, the other a practical coding challenge that didn't look like LeetCode.
4. A chat with the hiring manager.

The candidate said none of it was very hard. It was just a long process.

03: CodeSignal, a short recruiter call, then Byteboard

Report date: Oct 4, 2025 · Role: Software Engineer (Internship) · Location: San Francisco · Result: No offer

Online assessment

1. CodeSignal's General Coding Assessment (GCA). The candidate scored 600 and heard back the next day.

Recruiter call (15 minutes)

1. Why Notion (practice).
2. Talk about a project (practice).

Take-home

1. A Byteboard take-home on data structures and algorithms. The candidate didn't describe the task.

The rejection came shortly after the take-home.

04: Take-home first, then two back-to-back interviews

Report date: Oct 1, 2025 · Role: Software Engineering Intern · Location: United States · Result: No offer

Process

1. A take-home assessment.
2. Two interviews back to back. Neither was LeetCode-style, and the interviewers were happy to help with syntax.
3. A final interview with the hiring manager.

Question the candidate listed

1. Tell me about a project (practice).

The candidate found the interviewers easygoing and felt the loop tested real coding skill.

05: OOP design and React debugging in one hard session

Report date: Sep 1, 2025 · Role: SWE Intern · Location: Canada · Result: No offer

Live interview

1. Object-oriented design. The task wasn't described.
2. Debugging a React + TypeScript codebase.

The interviewer joined from a meeting room, far from its camera and microphone. With the candidate sharing their screen, the interviewer's video was small and hard to see or hear. At one point the interviewer suggested some syntax that turned out to be wrong; the candidate later found the bug and fixed it. Later the candidate got stuck on slicing with a step and spent a long time on it without help. At the end the interviewer said there was no time left to run the tests.

The candidate felt the session leaned on small syntax details more than problem solving, and left discouraged.

Patterns across these reports

1. A debugging round. Reports 01, 02 and 05 each had one. Only 01 says what the code was (a small Notion-like app), and only 05 names the stack (React and TypeScript).

2. A take-home early on. Reports 02, 03 and 04 all had a take-home. In 02 it came after an online test, in 03 it was a Byteboard test after an online test and a recruiter call, and in 04 it was the very first step.

3. Practical coding over puzzles. Reports 01, 02 and 04 describe coding that wasn't LeetCode-style. Report 03 is the exception on paper: its take-home was on data structures and algorithms.

4. A hiring manager at the end. Reports 02 and 04 both finished with a hiring-manager interview.

5. Project questions. Reports 03 and 04 were both asked to talk about a project.

Software Engineer, AI intern

One report, from a candidate who stopped after the first round. Its first round was a LeetCode-style coding question, unlike the general intern reports above. No question was named, so there's no question table for this track.

1 detailed candidate timeline

06: Solved the first round, still rejected

Report date: Aug 2025 · Role: Software Engineer, AI intern · Result: Rejected after round 1

Round 1: coding

1. A LeetCode-style coding question. The candidate solved it fully and all the unit tests passed, but was still rejected. The problem wasn't named.

Rounds the candidate didn't reach

1. Round 2 was to be an LLM prompting interview.
2. Round 3 was to be a behavioral interview with a tech lead or manager.

Keep practicing

• Debug a Mini Notion App: the debugging project built from report 01.
• The Notion project coding bank has the other Notion build-and-debug projects (sign-in needed).
• The Notion coding question bank holds Notion's coding problems (sign-in needed).
• The Notion behavioral question bank has the project and why-Notion prompts 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.