Type · Problem Solving

Growth · Software Engineer Interview Guide
Applies via GreenhouseHow to Pass the Grammarly Software Engineer Interview in 2026
The Grammarly DNA (TL;DR)
The Grammarly Interview Loop
Your onsite loop will typically consist of 5 rounds.
- 1
Round 1
Recruiter ScreenMotivation, role fit, logistics. - 2
Round 2
Coding ScreenLeetCode-medium algorithmic problems under time pressure. - 3
Round 3
System DesignDistributed systems, trade-offs at scale, architecture under constraints. - 4
Round 4
Onsite CodingLeetCode-hard, debugging, code clarity, edge cases. - 5
Round 5
Behavioral / LeadershipPast evidence of ownership, influence, resolving conflict.
The Danger Zone: Top Reasons Candidates Fail
Based on our database of Grammarly interview outcomes, avoid these common traps:
- Not defining clear criteria for what constitutes a 'detectable' error within the stream.
- Implementing a overly simplistic heuristic that doesn't capture nuances of writing quality.
- Ignoring potential bottlenecks in suggestion generation or retrieval.
- Introducing new bugs while attempting to fix the original one.
Test Yourself: Real Grammarly Questions
Three real prompts pulled from our database.
Type · String Manipulation
Type · Algorithmic
+ many more questions, signals, and worked examples
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Grammarly Interview Question Bank
A sample from our database, grouped by round. Sign up to see the full set.
9 of 18 questions shown
Recruiter Screen
1- 1
Type · Motivation
What interests you about working at Grammarly, and how do you see your skills contributing to our mission of improving communication?
Coding Screen
3- 2
Type · Algorithmic
Given a stream of sentences, design an algorithm to detect if any sentence contains a grammatical error that Grammarly's core product would flag. You can assume access to a hypothetical API that returns true if a sentence has a specific type of error. - 3
Type · Data Structures
Implement a data structure that can efficiently store and retrieve all unique suggestions Grammarly has made for a given user across all their documents. The structure should support adding a new suggestion and querying for all suggestions made for a specific user. - + 1 more questions in this round (sign up to unlock)
System Design
3- 4
Type · API Design
Design the backend system for a new Grammarly feature that suggests alternative phrasing for sentences. Consider how users will submit text, how suggestions will be generated (assume a model exists), and how results will be returned efficiently, especially for long documents. - 5
Type · Database Design
Design the database schema to store user feedback on Grammarly suggestions (e.g., 'helpful', 'not helpful', 'incorrect'). The system needs to support querying feedback for specific suggestion types, specific users, and overall trends. - + 1 more questions in this round (sign up to unlock)
Onsite Coding
3- 6
Type · Debugging
A user reports that Grammarly occasionally misses obvious spelling errors in their emails. Here's a simplified version of the code that handles spell checking. Find and fix the bug. - 7
Type · Algorithmic (Hard)
Given a large corpus of text and a user's writing, find the top K most similar sentences in the corpus to the user's sentences, based on a semantic similarity metric (you can define a simplified metric). - + 1 more questions in this round (sign up to unlock)
Behavioral / Leadership
8- 8
Type · Past Experience
Tell me about a time you had to influence a cross-functional team (engineers, designers, marketers) to adopt your product vision or strategy when there was initial resistance. What was the situation, what did you do, and what was the outcome? - 9
Type · Problem Solving
Describe a situation where you faced a significant, unexpected obstacle in a project you were managing. How did you approach the problem, what steps did you take to overcome it, and what did you learn from the experience? - + 6 more questions in this round (sign up to unlock)
Unlock the full Grammarly question bank
Free signup, no credit card. You get every question + the framework, grading signals, and worked answer for each.
Interview tracks at Grammarly
How Grammarly's DNA translates across functions. Pick your role.
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Practice Grammarly interviews end-to-end
Grammarly Mock Interview
Run a live mock interview with our AI interviewer using Grammarly-style prompts. Get scored on structure, signal, and answer length - exactly how the real loop grades you.
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STAR Stories for Grammarly Behavioral Rounds
Build a Story Bank of your past wins, mapped to the leadership signals Grammarly interviewers grade on. Reuse them across every behavioral round.
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Grammarly Interview Prep Hub
The frameworks behind every Grammarly round: CIRCLES for product sense, hypothesis-driven debugging for analytical, STAR for behavioral. Learn each one in 10 minutes.
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Interview Frameworks
CIRCLES, STAR, AARRR, RICE, MECE. The exact frameworks that make Grammarly interviewers nod instead of frown. Step-by-step playbooks with the moves and the pitfalls.
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