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Notion's Interview Process (2026)

Blog / Notion's Interview Process (2026)

Notion's software engineer interview process generally runs 5 to 7 rounds and is built around a 'practical engineering' philosophy. Most candidates report a process that looks something like this:

Recruiter Screen: A 30-minute conversation covering your background and interest in Notion. Expect a product-minded question or two, like what Notion feature you'd improve.
Take-Home Project: Candidates typically receive around 5 days to complete a coding assignment that takes roughly 4 to 8 hours. Most reports describe building a simplified block-based editor using React and TypeScript.
Technical Phone Screen: A live coding session on CoderPad, usually around 60 minutes. This is either a standalone algorithm problem or a mini-extension of your take-home work.
Onsite: Practical Coding: A focused coding or debugging round, typically around 60 minutes, testing how you work within a real codebase rather than abstract puzzles.
Onsite: System Design: A 60-minute session centered on real-time collaboration systems. Expect to discuss topics like Operational Transforms, CRDTs, and websocket architecture.
Onsite: Take-Home Walkthrough: You pair-program with a Notion engineer to extend your own take-home code live. This tests how maintainable and readable your original work was.
Onsite: Customer Empathy Round: A cross-functional interview, often with a PM or designer, where you solve engineering problems through a product and user lens.
Hiring Manager Interview: A 45-minute conversation focused on ownership, how you handle changing requirements, and how you operate on a team.
Founders Round: A final 30-minute culture check, sometimes with a founder or very early employee, assessing alignment with Notion's 'small team, high impact' values.

Notion's interview covers several distinct technical areas worth preparing for separately. Here is how to break down your prep:

Take-Home Project: A practical coding assignment building a simplified block-based editor.
Data Structures & Algorithms: Coding questions focused on real editor mechanics like undo/redo and permission hierarchies.
Frontend Engineering: React and TypeScript questions tied to complex state management and editor rendering.
System Design: Designing real-time collaborative systems with a focus on Notion's block-based architecture.
Behavioral: Questions about ownership, product thinking, and working through ambiguity.

1. Take-Home ProjectThe take-home is one of the most important filters in Notion's process. Most candidates report building a Simplified Block Editor that handles different block types, drag-and-drop reordering, and an undo/redo system. You typically have around 5 days, and the expected time investment is 4 to 8 hours.Notion evaluates code organization, state management, and attention to UX details as much as raw functionality. Think about edge cases, write clean component boundaries, and show that you care about how the product feels to use, not just that it works.In the Take-Home Walkthrough round that follows, an engineer will ask you to extend your own code live. Writing maintainable, readable code in the take-home pays off directly in that session. Explore take-home project practice to sharpen your approach before submitting.

2. Data Structures & AlgorithmsNotion's DSA questions are grounded in editor mechanics rather than abstract puzzles. The most commonly cited example is implementing an Undo Redo System using a Command pattern or two stacks, which maps directly to what they ask you to build in the take-home. Brush up on stacks and trees as they come up regularly.Permission modeling is another frequent topic. You might be asked to design a data structure for 'who can see what' in a nested document hierarchy, similar to the Permissions and Sharing System problem. This tests your ability to think about real product constraints alongside algorithmic efficiency.For broader DSA preparation, working through our top 100 DSA questions is a solid way to cover the patterns Notion tends to pull from, including LRU cache design and tree traversal.

3. Frontend EngineeringNotion is a React-heavy product, and their frontend questions reflect that. Expect questions around managing complex state in a collaborative environment, rendering performance for large block lists, and implementing editor behaviors from scratch. Solid React fundamentals are essential here.One scenario that comes up in the Customer Empathy round is diagnosing why pages with 1,000+ blocks are slow. You should be ready to talk about virtualization, lazy rendering, and the trade-offs between performance and user experience in concrete terms.In 2026, some candidates reported that interviewers were open to AI-assisted tooling like Cursor or Claude Code in certain rounds, as long as you could explain the logic and handle the implementation details yourself. Being comfortable using these tools without losing ownership of your code is increasingly a signal.

4. System DesignNotion's system design round is squarely focused on real-time collaboration. You will almost certainly be asked to design a collaborative document editor, and you need to be ready to discuss Operational Transforms vs. CRDTs and why one might be chosen over the other. Check out our High-Level Design case studies to practice this type of architecture question.Beyond the core editor design, expect follow-up threads on websocket scalability, handling concurrent edits, and block-based storage trade-offs between SQL and NoSQL. Knowing how Notion's block model affects both the frontend rendering layer and the backend storage schema will set you apart.If you want to practice sketching these architectures interactively, our System Design Whiteboard is a good tool to work through your designs before the interview. For foundational concepts like caching and networking, system design core concepts is worth a read.

5. BehavioralNotion's behavioral questions center on ownership and product thinking. Common prompts include 'Tell me about a time you owned a project from conception to production' and 'How do you handle changing requirements mid-sprint.' Frame your answers using the STAR principle to stay focused and specific.The Customer Empathy round is worth treating as its own behavioral preparation area. You will be in a conversation with a PM or designer, so avoid jargon-heavy answers. Talk about your technical decisions in terms of what the user actually experiences.The Founders Round is a culture fit check, not a technical one. Notion looks for people who operate like owners on a small team and have strong opinions about the product. Come prepared with 3 to 5 concrete thoughts on what Notion does well and what you would change. The Behavioral Interview Course can help you structure these stories effectively.

ConclusionNotion's process rewards engineers who use the product deeply, write code others can extend, and think about what they build from a user's perspective. Start by becoming a power user, then work through the technical areas above in order of the pipeline. Follow the Notion Interview Roadmap for a structured step-by-step plan to work through every stage.