Google PhD New Grad AI/ML Onsite: Largest Island, Almost-Equal Substring, and OOD

Role: Software Engineer, PhD New Grad — AI/ML
Result: Awaiting feedback
Report time: April 2025

The candidate applied to an AI/ML New Grad role and expected an ML round after a recruiter briefing. Instead, all three technical interviews were coding rounds.

Coding 1: largest island after one conversion

Given a binary grid, change at most one water cell to land and return the largest possible island area.

Practice: Largest Island After One Land Conversion

Coding 2: first almost-equal substring

Find the first substring that can match a pattern with at most one character difference.

Practice: Find the First Almost-Equal Substring

Coding 3: OOD with topological ordering

The third round required class inheritance and polymorphism, with a topological-sort core. The source does not preserve the domain, operations, inputs, or requested output, so no design problem is inferred.

Behavioral interview

The candidate described the behavioral round as ordinary and without surprises.

The comments debated whether Google uses one general SWE title for applied AI/ML and whether compensation or team assignment differs. Those comments are opinions and do not establish the candidate's final track or offer terms.