I applied online. I interviewed at TikTok (Sydney)
Interview
Phone screening followed by 2 rounds of technical interviews. Even though it was Sydney office, everyone was Chinese. Received offer but declined since they wanted me to go to office to work. Interviewer had to move between meeting rooms like three times during the interview, and I could also see other people peeping into the meeting room to see if it’s vacant. clearly this mandate of going to office is hindering productivity. Offered base pay was lower than my current salary and almost as low as L1 salary at my company, even though the offer was for L2.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Given sorted array of nondecreasing integers, and target integer k, find the start and end indices of k. Given 2D array representing chess board, starting position i and j, find the number of unique paths of length n that a knight can travel
I applied online. I interviewed at TikTok (Singapour) in Jan 2026
Interview
Deep dive into past projects, anything that is relevant in software development would be asked, not only backend development. Then the interviewer posed questions about basic concepts and terminologies like locks, process management, memory management, database sharing etc. Ended with a medium Leetcode problem.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
What was the biggest challenge you encountered during this project and how did you solve it? Did anyone else's advice make you better?
A technical interview: the interviewer gives you a leetcode question, you clarify your misunderstanding with them, you write code while explaning your thoughts, finally you write test to test your code. Used HackerRank platform.
Recruiter - A phone call with the recruiter to ask generic questions
Tech 1 - With team member
Tech 2 - With someone from another team
Behavioral - With the hiring manager