Are you willing to make that 800K bet? Top 20 Meta Engineering Manager Interview Questions You Can’t Afford to Miss!
The top 20 Meta Engineering Manager coding interview questions cover basic to medium difficulty, focusing on programming skills rather than production-quality code.
What if one question could make or break your shot at a Meta Engineering Manager role?
Imagine sitting across from a Meta interviewer, whiteboard marker in hand, with 45 minutes to prove you’ve still got the coding chops—despite years of managing teams. Nerve-wracking, right?
Now picture this: you nail every problem they throw at you, from matrix tricks to tree traversals, because you’ve prepped the exact questions that Meta loves to ask.
The truth is, Meta doesn’t expect production-ready code from Engineering Managers—but they do demand sharp problem-solving under pressure.
Ready to unlock the top 20 coding questions that could land you the job? Let’s dive in and crack the code together.
Your Cheat Sheet to Meta’s Coding Gauntlet
Think Meta Engineering Manager interviews are all about leadership chats and system design?
Think again. Hidden in the process is a coding curveball—a 45-minute test of your algorithmic grit. No, they’re not expecting you to churn out flawless production code (phew!), but they will grill you on LeetCode-style puzzles to see if you can still think like an engineer. We’re talking matrix mazes, string-crunching conundrums, and tree-traversal brain teasers—plus a sneaky code review twist that’ll keep you on your toes.
In this post, we’ve crunched the data from candidate war stories, insider tips, and Meta’s own playbook to bring you the top 20 coding questions you’ll face. From easy array hacks to medium-level mind-benders, this is your no-fluff guide to acing the technical round and snagging that Meta gig.
Let’s get coding!
Key Points
The top 20 Meta Engineering Manager coding interview questions cover basic to medium difficulty, focusing on programming skills rather than production-quality code.
Questions include matrix operations, string manipulations, tree traversals, and array calculations, with some specific to Meta's interview process.
Expect a mix of easy and medium LeetCode-style problems, with some unique questions like finding bugs in code.
Interview Overview
Meta's coding interviews for Engineering Managers assess your ability to apply basic programming skills to solve problems, rather than expecting production-quality code. These interviews typically last 45 minutes and are part of a broader interview process that includes technical and non-technical rounds. The questions are designed to evaluate problem-solving, communication, and coding efficiency, often similar to LeetCode medium-level challenges.
Common Topics
The questions span various topics such as:
Matrix and Array Operations: Finding rows with maximum 1’s, array products, and moving zeroes.
String Manipulations: Removing duplicates, pattern matching, and basic calculations.
Tree and Graph Problems: Tree depth, diameter, and traversals.
Bit Manipulation: Counting bits in integers efficiently.
Comprehensive Analysis of Meta Engineering Manager Coding Interview Questions
This section provides a detailed examination of the top 20 coding interview questions for Engineering Manager positions at Meta, based on extensive research from various sources including interview preparation platforms, candidate experiences, and expert analyses. The focus is on understanding the nature of these questions, their relevance to the role, and how they align with Meta's interview process.
Background and Context
Engineering Managers at Meta are expected to lead teams, oversee technical projects, and ensure the success of engineering initiatives. While their primary role involves leadership and people management, technical proficiency remains crucial, especially in coding interviews. Meta's interview process, as outlined in resources like IGotAnOffer, includes coding assessments to evaluate basic programming skills, not production-quality code. This is evident from candidate reports on platforms like Glassdoor and Reddit, which highlight that coding interviews are part of the onsite rounds, typically lasting 45 minutes and involving 2-3 questions.
The coding interview is designed to assess problem-solving abilities, communication skills, and the ability to write clean, efficient code, as noted in Exponent. For Engineering Managers, the bar is set to ensure they can understand and guide their teams on technical matters, which is why coding questions, while not as complex as those for software engineers, still cover fundamental data structures and algorithms.
Methodology
To compile this list, we analyzed multiple sources:
Specific Questions for Managers: From IGotAnOffer and Prepfully, which provided examples like finding the row with the most 1’s in a matrix and array product except self.
General Meta Coding Questions: From Design Gurus, which listed 20 coding problems commonly asked at Meta, categorized by difficulty.
Candidate Experiences: Reddit posts and Glassdoor reviews, such as r/leetcode, which discussed the coding interview process for managers, often comparing it to LeetCode medium and hard levels.
Common Coding Interview Questions: From Hackerrank, which provided a broad list but was filtered for relevance to Meta's standards.
We prioritized questions that align with the "basic programming skills" focus for managers, as mentioned in IGotAnOffer, and ensured a mix of easy and medium difficulty to reflect the expected level.
The Top 20 Meta Engineering Manager Coding Questions
Here’s your ultimate list of the top 20 coding challenges for Meta Engineering Manager interviews, complete with problem statements, sample inputs, and expected outputs. These span the essentials—matrices, strings, trees, and more—testing your ability to solve problems cleanly and efficiently. Let’s dive in:
Toeplitz Matrix
Category: Matrix Operations
Difficulty: Easy
Problem Statement: Given an m x n matrix, determine if it’s a Toeplitz matrix, where every diagonal from top-left to bottom-right has the same elements.
Valid Input: matrix = [[1,2,3,4], [5,1,2,3], [9,5,1,2]] (3x4 matrix)
Expected Output: true (Each diagonal—e.g., 1,1,1; 2,2,2—has identical values)
Why It Matters: Tests basic matrix traversal, key for guiding teams on grid-based tasks.
Remove All Adjacent Duplicates In String
Category: String Manipulation
Difficulty: Easy
Problem Statement: Given a string s, remove all adjacent duplicate characters repeatedly until no more removals are possible.
Valid Input: s = "abbaca"
Expected Output: "ca" (Remove "bb" → "aaca", then "aa" → "ca")
Why It Matters: Assesses string handling, vital for debugging text-processing issues.
Minimum Depth of a Binary Tree
Category: Tree Traversal
Difficulty: Easy
Problem Statement: Find the minimum depth of a binary tree—the shortest path from the root to a leaf node.
Valid Input: root = [3,9,20,null,null,15,7] (Tree: 3 root, 9 left, 20 right, 15 and 7 as 20’s children)
Expected Output: 2 (Shortest path: 3 → 9)
Why It Matters: Evaluates tree navigation, crucial for system design discussions.
Tree Diameter
Category: Tree Traversal
Difficulty: Easy
Problem Statement: Compute the diameter of a binary tree—the length of the longest path between any two nodes.
Valid Input: root = [1,2,3,4,5] (Tree: 1 root, 2 left, 3 right, 4 and 5 as 2’s children)
Expected Output: 3 (Path: 4 → 2 → 1 → 3)
Why It Matters: Tests tree structure understanding, relevant for design oversight.
Island Perimeter
Category: Graph/Grid
Difficulty: Easy
Problem Statement: Given a row x col grid where 1’s represent land and 0’s water, calculate the perimeter of an island (land cells connected 4-directionally).
Valid Input: grid = [[0,1,0,0], [1,1,1,0], [0,1,0,0], [1,1,0,0]]
Expected Output: 16 (Count edges: 4 per land cell, minus 2 per shared edge)
Why It Matters: Assesses grid traversal, useful for infrastructure tasks.
Move Zeroes
Category: Array Manipulation
Difficulty: Easy
Problem Statement: Given an array nums, move all 0’s to the end while maintaining the relative order of non-zero elements. Do this in-place.
Valid Input: nums = [0,1,0,3,12]
Expected Output: [1,3,12,0,0]
Why It Matters: Tests basic array skills, ensuring you can handle simple coding.
Missing Ranges
Category: Array Manipulation
Difficulty: Easy
Problem Statement: Given a sorted integer array nums and bounds lower and upper, return all missing ranges as strings.
Valid Input: nums = [0,1,3,50,75], lower = 0, upper = 99
Expected Output: ["2","4->49","51->74","76->99"]
Why It Matters: Tests range logic, relevant for data processing oversight.
Rank Transform of an Array
Category: Array Manipulation
Difficulty: Easy
Problem Statement: Given an array arr, replace each element with its rank (1-based) based on its value, with larger values getting higher ranks.
Valid Input: arr = [40,10,20,30]
Expected Output: [4,1,2,3] (10=1, 20=2, 30=3, 40=4)
Why It Matters: Evaluates ranking skills, useful for data analysis guidance.
Palindrome Permutation
Category: String Manipulation
Difficulty: Easy
Problem Statement: Check if a string s can be rearranged into a palindrome (at most one character with an odd count).
Valid Input: s = "aabb"
Expected Output: true (Can form "abba" or "baab")
Why It Matters: Assesses pattern recognition, great for code reviews.
Diagonal Traverse
Category: Matrix Operations
Difficulty: Medium
Problem Statement: Given an m x n matrix, return all elements in diagonal order (top-left to bottom-right, alternating directions).
Valid Input: matrix = [[1,2,3], [4,5,6], [7,8,9]]
Expected Output: [1,2,4,7,5,3,6,8,9]
Why It Matters: Tests complex traversal, matching Meta’s medium-level bar.
Maximum Swap
Category: Number Manipulation
Difficulty: Medium
Problem Statement: Given a non-negative integer num, swap two digits at most once to get the maximum possible value.
Valid Input: num = 2736
Expected Output: 7236 (Swap 2 and 7)
Why It Matters: Evaluates optimization, key for performance talks.
Custom Sort String
Category: String Manipulation
Difficulty: Medium
Problem Statement: Given a string order and string s, permute s so characters follow the custom order in order.
Valid Input: order = "cba", s = "abcd"
Expected Output: "cbad" (c, b, a per order, then d)
Why It Matters: Tests sorting logic, crucial for algorithm guidance.
Buildings With an Ocean View
Category: Array/Stack
Difficulty: Medium
Problem Statement: Given an array heights of building heights, return indices of buildings with an ocean view (no taller building to their right).
Valid Input: heights = [4,2,3,1]
Expected Output: [0,2,3] (4, 3, 1 see the ocean)
Why It Matters: Assesses stack skills, vital for scalability discussions.
Basic Calculator II
Category: String Parsing
Difficulty: Medium
Problem Statement: Given a string s with numbers and operators (+, -, *, /), evaluate it (multiplication/division before addition/subtraction).
Valid Input: s = "3+2*2"
Expected Output: 7 (2*2=4, then 3+4=7)
Why It Matters: Tests parsing, relevant for API design oversight.
Dot Product of Two Sparse Vectors
Category: Array/Math
Difficulty: Medium
Problem Statement: Given two sparse vectors (mostly 0’s), compute their dot product efficiently.
Valid Input: vec1 = [1,0,0,2,3], vec2 = [0,3,0,4,0]
Expected Output: 8 (10 + 03 + 00 + 24 + 3*0 = 8)
Why It Matters: Evaluates efficiency, important for data processing.
Find the Row with the Most 1’s in a Matrix Where Each Row Starts with 1’s Followed by 0’s
Category: Matrix Operations
Difficulty: Medium
Problem Statement: Given a binary matrix where each row is sorted (1’s then 0’s), find the row index with the most 1’s.
Valid Input: matrix = [[1,1,0], [1,0,0], [1,1,1]]
Expected Output: 2 (Row 2 has three 1’s)
Why It Matters: A Meta-specific test of matrix analysis, key for leadership.
Fastest Way to Count the Number of Bits in a 32-bit or 64-bit Integer
Category: Bit Manipulation
Difficulty: Easy-Medium
Problem Statement: Given an integer n, count the number of 1 bits in its binary representation efficiently.
Valid Input: n = 13 (Binary: 1101)
Expected Output: 3 (Three 1’s)
Why It Matters: Tests bit operations, essential for optimization talks.
Determine if a String Matches a Pattern
Category: String Matching
Difficulty: Easy-Medium
Problem Statement: Given a string s and a pattern p with letters and wildcards (., *), check if s matches p.
Valid Input: s = "aa", p = "a*"
Expected Output: true (* matches zero or more ‘a’s)
Why It Matters: Assesses pattern matching, useful for regex guidance.
Array Product Except Self
Category: Array Manipulation
Difficulty: Medium
Problem Statement: Given an array nums, return an array where each element is the product of all other elements. No division allowed.
Valid Input: nums = [1,2,3,4]
Expected Output: [24,12,8,6] (e.g., 24 = 234)
Why It Matters: Tests array computation, a Meta interview classic.
Continuous Subarray Summing to Multiple of k
Category: Array/Dynamic Programming
Difficulty: Medium-Hard
Problem Statement: Given an array nums and integer k, find the length of the longest subarray whose sum is a multiple of k.
Valid Input: nums = [23,2,4,6,7], k = 6
Expected Output: 4 (Subarray [2,4,6,7] sums to 19, 18 from 2,4,6 is 6*3)
Why It Matters: Evaluates complex subarray logic, great for algorithm discussions.
Analysis and Insights
The selection process involved ensuring that the questions reflect the "basic programming skills" focus for Engineering Managers, as highlighted in IGotAnOffer. For instance, questions like "Find bugs in a chunk of Objective C code" were considered but excluded as they are more code review tasks, not standard coding problems. Instead, we included questions like "Fastest way to count the number of bits," which is an easy-to-medium bit manipulation problem, aligning with the expected level.
The inclusion of specific Meta questions, such as "Find the row with the most 1’s," from IGotAnOffer, ensures relevance to the role. The Design Gurus list, while general for Meta, was filtered to include only easy and medium questions for the first 15, supplemented by the specific questions to reach 20, ensuring a mix that matches candidate experiences on Reddit and Glassdoor.
A surprising detail is the inclusion of code review tasks, like finding bugs, which tests debugging skills rather than algorithmic coding, as seen in candidate discussions on Glassdoor. This is less common but important for managers to guide their teams on code quality.
Preparation Tips
You should focus on practicing these questions on platforms like LeetCode, using resources like Design Gurus for solutions and explanations. Given the 45-minute duration, as mentioned in Exponent, time management is key, especially for medium and hard questions like "Continuous subarray summing to multiple of k." Communication skills are also critical, as interviewers assess how you explain your thought process, as noted in Reddit posts like r/leetcode.
Conclusion
This list provides a robust foundation for preparing for Meta Engineering Manager coding interviews, covering essential topics and aligning with the company's focus on basic programming skills. You should practice these questions, focusing on clarity and efficiency, to succeed in your interviews.
Key Citations
