Google 2026 New Grad Four-Coding-Round Timeline and Team Match

Role: Software Engineer, New Grad
Result: Entered Team Match
Report time: February 2026
Onsite location: Mountain View
Application: Referral

Timeline

• October 3: applied with a referral
• November 1: received and completed the OA
• November 11: R1 coding
• November 13: R1 behavioral
• November 19: asked to complete an additional R1 coding round
• December 10: additional R1 coding
• December 14: passed R1 and scheduled R2
• January 29: completed two back-to-back Mountain View onsite rounds
• February 6: visa check
• February 20: received Team Match form

The four coding rounds covered binary trees, hash tables, heaps, and intervals. None was a direct LeetCode problem.

Recoverable coding question

Given the root of a binary tree and any target node, return the farthest distance that can be reached from that node.

Practice: Farthest Distance From a Node in a Binary Tree

The exact hash-table, heap, and interval prompts were no longer remembered, so they are not reconstructed.

Interview reflections

The first R1 coding round used an approach the interviewer had not expected. Much of the session was spent validating whether it worked, leaving no time for follow-ups and leading to the additional round.

The candidate did not find the optimal solution in the additional round and struggled at points, but kept explaining their reasoning and still advanced. Their main takeaway was that communication and checking whether the interviewer follows the reasoning can matter more than producing the perfect solution immediately.

Coding was written in a shared document without execution; the candidate was not required to run test cases.