I applied through a recruiter. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Pinterest in Jul 2020
Interview
After a recruiter call they setup a phone call about a week later with one engineer, the conversation was informal with some personal background questions , then some rapid questions and open ended discussion about general best practices. overall it was a good experience
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
General iOS platform knowledge, some open ended questions about unit testing.
I applied through a recruiter. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Pinterest (San Francisco, CA) in Aug 2025
Interview
Recruiter screen then tech assesment which was general leetcode style coding.
For onsite there was 5 rounds. There was no leetcode in onsite interviews. 3 rounds were related to building a sample app from scratch. Was provided verbal description. 1 round was system design focussed on iOS system design and last round was behavioral.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Build an app from scratch. Was allowed to look into apple docs for syntacs and implementations help from stack overflow
I applied in-person. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Pinterest (San Francisco, CA) in Oct 2015
Interview
1) In person lunch interview - 1 hour
2) On-site - 4-6 hours
3) Rejection - priceless
Overall, everyone was very friendly. The office is great. Lunch is quite decent. A lot of weight is placed on cultural fit, so be friendly and open.
After preparing for more difficult interview questions, I got completely thrown off track when asked to implement a couple of very basic iOS tasks -- think table/collection views and autolayout. Also think no boilerplate code to even get the app on screen. For an experienced engineer, who may be used to adding features to an existing application or use Xcode boilerplate code (read: most people), this was annoying. Not a good measure of anything, in my opinion.
Was disappointed, because I don't think the two questions I flubbed were a good representation of day-to-day skills. Doubly disappointed, because I was told there would be a paired-coding session involving debugging, etc., which sounded a lot more worthwhile.
At end of day: prepared for a senior position, was thrown by junior/entry-level questions.
Interview questions [4]
Question 1
Simple algorithm dealing with a grid (think bucket tool in photoshop); implement in a way that scrolls smoothly using a table/collection view.
2 algorithm questions (already discussed on glass door); think recursion for one, and how pinterest might implement its infinite-scrolling boards for the other.
