Snowflake Software Engineer Interview Experience — Tree Deletions and Four-in-a-Row Detection

The author reports two Snowflake coding interviews, each lasting about an hour in an executable editor without AI assistance. The sessions included introductions or project discussion, technical work, and time for questions.

The first round examined a multi-child tree where deleting a node promotes its children rather than removing its entire subtree. The initial task asked for the resulting height; a follow-up sought a smallest deletion set meeting a height limit, with any optimal set accepted. The interviewer required running and testing the first solution but allowed pseudocode for the follow-up. The second round asked whether a new board move creates four consecutive matching pieces, with discussion of direction checks, boundaries, and complexity. Project questions covered ownership, milestones, delivery, and production behavior. The source does not report a hiring decision.