Booking.com interview, decoded.

Booking publishes the outline of its process on its careers site: an application, a first conversation with a recruiter, technical tests and coding interviews for technical roles, and a business stage where you meet your manager and teammates. The round-by-round detail below comes from candidate accounts on Reddit and LeetCode Discuss from 2025 and 2026. Many of the detailed accounts are from Bangalore, and we mark them where the round differs.

The round name trips people up. A Reddit commenter explains that it is called business because the problem comes from Booking's own business, such as finding the most visited hotels. Underneath it is still a coding problem you solve in about an hour, so prepare algorithms and practise reading them out of a story. The problems below are the ones candidates name; Booking rotates them, so learn the pattern.

• Convert between currencies: A European candidate reports a BFS on currency conversion. Model currencies as a graph with rates on the edges, search for a path from one currency to the other and multiply the rates along it. Say what happens when no path exists.
• Most visited hotels: Count visits per hotel with a hash map and keep the top k with a heap or a sort. Ask how ties and time windows work before you start.
• Card limits with authorise and capture: Reported in Bangalore: business rules for a credit card limit and transactions that are authorised first and captured later. Keep the balance and the held amounts separate, and validate each rule in its own function so new rules are easy to add.
• Pay-ins and pay-outs across currencies: Reported onsite in 2026: a list of money movements in several currencies and a fee map for conversions. Net the amounts per currency first, then choose the conversions that cost the least in fees.
• Compare two JSON datasets: Reported in Bangalore in 2026: compare JSON arrays and draw conclusions from the data, with questions on your choice of data structures. Index one side by key so the comparison is linear, and state the complexity.

Booking's own advice for technical interviews is to understand the problem first and say how you are thinking. Ask the clarifying questions out loud before you write code.

Candidates describe design prompts taken from Booking's own products, and one rejection came with the feedback that the design was over-engineered. Start with the simplest design that meets the requirements and add parts only when a requirement asks for them.

• A loyalty flag for a billion customers: Reported in Bangalore in 2025: 1% of a billion customers are Genius, meaning at least two completed bookings in two years; compute the flag, store it and serve it to the frontend. A batch job over bookings plus a key-value store keyed by customer covers it; discuss how fresh the flag must be before adding streaming.
• Design around a feature you just built: A European full-stack candidate built a small component in plain JavaScript and a backend function, then designed the system around it. Reuse the code you wrote, and grow it in steps: data model, API, caching, then scale.

Keep it simple first. The over-engineering feedback is the one piece of design feedback a candidate reported in writing.

Booking lists five values on its careers site, and the culture-fit round is built on them. Its technical interview advice adds one more point.

• Think customer first: Booking says it obsesses about adding value for guests and partners
• Succeed together
• Own it
• Learn forever
• Do the right thing
• Talking through your thinking: Booking calls a technical assessment just as much a communication exercise

The technical themes come from candidate accounts in 2025 and 2026. The behavioural questions are built on Booking's five values, which is what the culture-fit round asks about.

Totals a year for software engineers at Booking.com in the Netherlands on Levels.fyi, read on 26 September 2026 from 923 submissions. The page's range is €67.9K to €228K+; the levels are shown as monthly amounts in US dollars, so these are converted at the page's own rate and rounded, and should be treated as estimates. Stock is RSUs vesting over three years (34%, 33%, 33%). Booking's Dutch ads carry no pay range. The 30% ruling for incoming hires drops to 27% from 2027. Calibrd benchmarks the offer against your level and location in the report.

1. Practise timed HackerRank sets: three problems in 90 minutes, easy to medium.
2. Practise reading an algorithm out of a story. For each business problem, name the data structure before you write code.
3. Ask clarifying questions out loud. Booking calls a technical assessment just as much a communication exercise.
4. In system design, start simple. One rejection came with the feedback that the design was over-engineered.
5. Prepare one story for each of Booking's five values, since the culture-fit round is built on them.
6. Check the relocation line in the ad before you apply. Most Amsterdam engineering ads say there is none and ask for candidates already in the Netherlands.
7. Expect some processes to stall. Candidates report roles closing after the online test and fast rejections after a coding round, so keep other processes going.
8. Booking doesn't say whether AI tools are allowed in interviews. Ask your recruiter before the coding round.

This guide covers Booking.com's engineering hiring in Amsterdam. Booking publishes the outline of its process; the rounds come from candidate accounts, many of them from Bangalore, and we say where a round is reported only there. For management and leadership roles the loop is similar but the bar shifts to people, delivery and strategy, so pair it with the leadership interview prep hub. The bar for your exact role comes from the role-by-role guides, and the prep that actually transfers is spoken, so run a mock interview before the real one.

Also interviewing at Zalando, Delivery Hero or Vinted? Their guides follow the same format, from the first screen to the offer.

• 01Booking.com, start your journeythe stages of the process, three to six weeks, hearing back within a week, the five values, a technical assessment as a communication exercise, AI used to analyse CVs, and new backend systems in Java with Perl being ported
• 02Booking.com, hybrid ways of workingat least 40% of time in person with the team
• 03Booking.com, Software Engineer I, Backend, AmsterdamJava, Python and Perl, and no relocation, with candidates required to live in the Netherlands (posted 11 September 2026)
• 04Booking.com, Software Engineer II, Partner Identity, Amsterdamthe move off an in-house Perl system and experience with AI coding agents and automated review (posted 4 September 2026)
• 05IND, register of recognised sponsorsBooking.com B.V. listed as a recognised sponsor (register of 3 September 2026)
• 06NL Times, Booking.com looks to cut its workforce by 10%almost 50 of 350 Amsterdam managers let go in the first phase, and 7,000 employees in Amsterdam (24 April 2025)
• 07DutchNews, Booking to cut some 1,000 jobsmore than 200 and fewer than 1,000 jobs in Amsterdam, 13,000 employees worldwide, and too many layers of management (16 July 2025)
• 08LeetCode Discuss, Booking.com online assessment for Amsterdam and Londonthree questions in 90 minutes (July 2025)
• 09LeetCode Discuss, Booking Holdings SDE II in Bangalorethe credit card limit and authorise-and-capture problem on HackerRank (May 2025)
• 10LeetCode Discuss, Booking Holdings SDE II in Bangalore, rejectedthe Genius flag design for a billion customers and the over-engineering feedback (November 2025)
• 11LeetCode Discuss, Software Engineer II onsitethe pay-in and pay-out problem across currencies with a fee map (January 2026)
• 12LeetCode Discuss, Booking.com interview experienceelimination rounds and the JSON comparison problem (January 2026)
• 13LeetCode Discuss, a role closed after the online testthe interview process cancelled after candidates cleared the test (March 2026)
• 14LeetCode Discuss, Booking.com SDE II in Bangalorea rejection five minutes after the coding round and the design round cancelled (May 2026)
• 15Reddit, a Booking.com business roundthe usual order of test, business coding and culture fit, and a commenter on why it is called business (April 2026)
• 16Reddit, a Booking.com interviewa BFS on currency conversion (March 2026)
• 17Reddit, a Booking.com full-stack interviewa component in plain JavaScript, a backend function, then system design (February 2026)
• 18Levels.fyi, Booking.com software engineer pay in the Netherlandsthe €67.9K to €228K+ range, monthly totals by level from 923 submissions, and the three-year RSU vesting (26 September 2026)

Interview processes change. This reflects widely-reported and sourced conditions as of 2026 — confirm specifics with your recruiter, and treat it as a map rather than a guarantee.