FAANG Coding Interview Prep Plan Week by Week 2026

You know that awful feeling when you open LeetCode, see 3,000 problems, and immediately want to close the tab and become a goat farmer? FAANG prep can feel messy, random, and honestly kind of unfair, especially when Meta, Google, Amazon, Apple, and Netflix expect you to solve problems under pressure while explaining your brain out loud.

The good news: you do not need to “grind everything.” You need a week-by-week plan that builds skill, timing, confidence, and interview muscle. This 2026 prep plan is designed for real people with jobs, classes, families, low energy days, and that one friend who keeps saying “just do dynamic programming bro.”

What FAANG Coding Interviews Look Like in 2026#

Before you plan your weeks, you need to know what you are training for.

Most FAANG-style technical interview loops still include:

1. Online assessment, often 60 to 90 minutes.
2. Technical phone screen, usually 1 or 2 coding problems.
3. Onsite or virtual loop, often 3 to 5 interviews.
4. Behavioral interview, especially important at Amazon and Meta.
5. System design, usually for mid-level and senior roles.

For entry-level and junior software engineering roles, coding is the main event. For mid-level roles, coding plus design matters. For senior roles, coding still matters, but system design and leadership signals can make or break you.

Here is the rough compensation target that keeps people motivated:

• Google L3 Software Engineer, US: often around $180k to $230k total compensation
• Meta E4 Software Engineer, US: often around $220k to $300k total compensation
• Amazon SDE II, US: often around $180k to $260k total compensation
• Apple ICT3 Software Engineer, US: often around $170k to $240k total compensation
• Netflix Software Engineer, US: often much higher variation, often $300k+ total compensation
• Google L3 Dublin, Ireland: often around €90k to €130k total compensation
• Amazon SDE II Berlin, Germany: often around €95k to €140k total compensation
• Meta London E4, UK: often around £110k to £170k total compensation

Numbers move by location, level, stock, and market. But yes, the money is real, which is why the prep feels intense.

The 12-Week FAANG Coding Interview Prep Plan#

This plan assumes you can study 10 to 15 hours per week.

If you can do more, great. If you can only do 6 to 8 hours, stretch this into 16 weeks. The point is not to suffer. The point is to get consistently better.

Your Weekly Rhythm

Use this weekly structure:

1. 3 days: Learn and solve topic-specific problems.
2. 1 day: Mixed review.
3. 1 day: Timed interview practice.
4. 1 day: Mistake review and notes.
5. 1 day: Rest or light revision.

A sample week could look like this:

• Monday: 2 problems, arrays or strings
• Tuesday: 2 problems, same topic
• Wednesday: 1 medium problem, deep review
• Thursday: 2 mixed problems
• Friday: 45-minute mock interview
• Saturday: Review misses and rewrite solutions
• Sunday: Rest, or 30 minutes of flashcards

You should track every problem you do. Not for ego, for pattern recognition.

Track:

• Problem name
• Topic
• Difficulty
• Time spent
• Whether you solved it without hints
• Mistake type
• Revisit date

Week 1: Setup, Baseline, Arrays, and Strings#

Your first week is not about proving you are smart. It is about finding your starting point.

Start with a baseline test. Pick 3 medium LeetCode-style problems from arrays and strings. Give yourself 45 minutes each. No hints, no YouTube, no “just checking the discussion real quick.”

You are testing:

1. Can you find the brute force solution?
2. Can you improve it?
3. Can you write clean code?
4. Can you explain your thinking?
5. Can you debug without panicking?

For arrays and strings, focus on:

• Two pointers
• Sliding window
• Prefix sums
• Hash maps
• Sorting tricks
• Frequency counting

Good practice problems:

• Two Sum
• Best Time to Buy and Sell Stock
• Valid Anagram
• Group Anagrams
• Longest Substring Without Repeating Characters
• Product of Array Except Self
• Maximum Subarray
• Minimum Window Substring

By the end of Week 1, you should have a basic prep environment.

Set up:

• LeetCode or similar platform
• Google Doc or Notion tracker
• Timer
• GitHub repo for clean solutions
• Interviewing.io, Pramp, or peer mock setup
• One main programming language

Do not switch languages every three days. Pick Python, Java, C++, JavaScript, or Go and stay loyal.

For most people, Python is the fastest for interviews. For some Amazon and Google roles, Java or C++ can also be a strong choice, especially if that is what you use daily.

Week 2: Hash Maps, Sets, and Sorting Patterns#

Week 2 is where you learn to stop doing nested loops for everything.

Hash maps and sets show up constantly because they help you trade space for speed. FAANG interviewers love seeing that you can reduce an O(n²) approach to O(n) or O(n log n).

Focus on these patterns:

1. Count frequencies.
2. Store seen values.
3. Map value to index.
4. Group by computed key.
5. Sort first, then scan.
6. Detect duplicates quickly.

Practice problems:

• Contains Duplicate
• Top K Frequent Elements
• 3Sum
• Longest Consecutive Sequence
• Subarray Sum Equals K
• Valid Sudoku
• Insert Delete GetRandom O(1)

When you solve, do not just submit and move on. Ask yourself:

• Why does this data structure fit?
• What is the time complexity?
• What breaks if input is empty?
• What breaks if numbers are negative?
• Can duplicates exist?
• Could sorting change the answer?

This week, start speaking out loud while coding. Yes, it feels weird. Do it anyway.

Say things like:

“I’m going to start with a brute force approach, then improve it using a hash map.”

That one sentence already makes you sound more structured.

Week 3: Linked Lists, Stacks, and Queues#

Some candidates hate linked lists because they feel old-school. Bad news, they still show up.

Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, and Google-style interviews still use linked lists to test pointer handling, edge cases, and calmness. You do not need 50 linked list problems. You need the main patterns.

Focus on:

• Reverse a linked list
• Fast and slow pointers
• Dummy nodes
• Merge two lists
• Detect cycles
• Remove nth node
• Reorder list

Practice problems:

• Reverse Linked List
• Merge Two Sorted Lists
• Linked List Cycle
• Remove Nth Node From End of List
• Reorder List
• LRU Cache

For stacks and queues, learn:

• Monotonic stack
• Valid parentheses
• Min stack
• Queue using stacks
• Stack using queues
• Next greater element

Practice problems:

• Valid Parentheses
• Min Stack
• Daily Temperatures
• Evaluate Reverse Polish Notation
• Largest Rectangle in Histogram

This week is also where you should train your edge case checklist:

• Empty input
• One element
• Two elements
• Duplicate values
• Negative values
• Already sorted
• Reverse sorted
• Very large input

Interviews are full of tiny edge case traps. Your goal is to look calm and professional while handling them.

Week 4: Binary Search and Recursion#

Binary search is one of those topics that looks easy until your loop never ends.

In FAANG interviews, binary search is not only “find target in sorted array.” It can be:

1. Search in rotated array.
2. Find first or last occurrence.
3. Search answer space.
4. Minimize maximum value.
5. Find peak element.
6. Work with duplicates.

Practice problems:

• Binary Search
• Search in Rotated Sorted Array
• Find Minimum in Rotated Sorted Array
• Koko Eating Bananas
• Time Based Key-Value Store
• Find Peak Element
• Median of Two Sorted Arrays, if you want pain

For recursion, focus on:

• Base case
• Recursive case
• Return value
• Call stack
• Avoiding repeated work

Simple rule: if you cannot explain what your function returns in one sentence, your recursion is probably messy.

Say:

“This function returns the height of the current subtree.”

Or:

“This function returns whether the subtree rooted here is valid.”

That clarity helps a lot when you hit trees next week.

Week 5: Trees and Binary Search Trees#

Trees are a FAANG favorite because they test recursion, breadth-first search, depth-first search, and clean thinking.

Your must-know tree patterns:

1. DFS preorder, inorder, postorder
2. BFS level-order traversal
3. Height and depth
4. Lowest common ancestor
5. Validate binary search tree
6. Serialize and deserialize
7. Path sum
8. Build tree from traversals

Practice problems:

• Maximum Depth of Binary Tree
• Same Tree
• Invert Binary Tree
• Binary Tree Level Order Traversal
• Validate Binary Search Tree
• Lowest Common Ancestor of a BST
• Binary Tree Maximum Path Sum
• Serialize and Deserialize Binary Tree

For each tree problem, sketch a small tree first. Even if the interview is virtual, use the drawing tool or explain the shape.

A clean explanation could be:

“I’ll use DFS. At each node, I’ll get information from the left and right child, then combine it to compute the answer for the current node.”

That sounds simple, but it signals you understand recursive structure.

Week 6: Heaps, Intervals, and Greedy#

Week 6 is where problems start feeling more “real interview.”

Heaps are common when you need:

• Top K elements
• Running median
• Smallest or largest repeatedly
• Merge K sorted lists
• Scheduling tasks

Practice problems:

• Kth Largest Element in an Array
• Top K Frequent Elements
• Find Median from Data Stream
• Merge K Sorted Lists
• Task Scheduler
• Meeting Rooms II

Intervals show up all the time at Meta, Google, Amazon, and startups like Stripe, Datadog, and Airbnb.

Learn these interval patterns:

1. Sort by start time.
2. Merge overlaps.
3. Track current end.
4. Separate start and end arrays.
5. Use min heap for meeting rooms.

Practice problems:

• Merge Intervals
• Insert Interval
• Non-overlapping Intervals
• Meeting Rooms
• Meeting Rooms II
• Employee Free Time

Greedy problems are annoying because the proof matters. You need to explain why your local choice works.

Do not just say “greedy works.” Say why.

Example:

“Sorting by end time works because choosing the interval that ends earliest leaves the most room for future intervals.”

That is the kind of explanation interviewers want.

Week 7: Graphs, BFS, DFS, and Union Find#

Graphs scare people because they look less predictable. But most interview graph problems are built from a small set of patterns.

You need to know:

• BFS with queue
• DFS with recursion or stack
• Visited set
• Grid traversal
• Connected components
• Topological sort
• Union find
• Shortest path basics

Practice problems:

• Number of Islands
• Clone Graph
• Course Schedule
• Pacific Atlantic Water Flow
• Rotting Oranges
• Word Ladder
• Redundant Connection
• Accounts Merge

For grid problems, always define directions clearly:

dirs = [(1,0), (-1,0), (0,1), (0,-1)]

For graph problems, clarify:

1. Is the graph directed or undirected?
2. Can there be cycles?
3. Can there be disconnected components?
4. Are nodes numbered from 0 or 1?
5. Can edges repeat?
6. Are weights involved?

This week, do at least one timed mock interview. Graphs under time pressure expose gaps quickly.

Week 8: Dynamic Programming Without Crying#

Dynamic programming is where many smart candidates lose confidence. The issue is usually not intelligence. It is that they try to memorize 100 solutions instead of learning the decision pattern.

Start with these DP question types:

1. One-dimensional DP
2. Two-dimensional DP
3. Knapsack-style choices
4. Longest common subsequence
5. Grid paths
6. Kadane-style running best
7. Decision tree plus memoization

Practice problems:

• Climbing Stairs
• House Robber
• Coin Change
• Longest Increasing Subsequence
• Longest Common Subsequence
• Word Break
• Unique Paths
• Decode Ways
• Partition Equal Subset Sum

Use this DP framework:

1. What are the choices?
2. What state do I need?
3. What does dp[i] or dp[i][j] mean?
4. What is the transition?
5. What are the base cases?
6. What is the final answer?

Example for House Robber:

• dp[i] means the maximum money we can rob up to house i.
• Choice: rob current house or skip it.
• Transition: dp[i] = max(dp[i-1], dp[i-2] + nums[i]).

Simple. Not magic.

If DP makes you miserable, spend extra time on recursion plus memoization first. Bottom-up tabulation can come later.

Week 9: Mixed Mediums and Interview Communication#

By Week 9, you should stop studying by topic all the time. Real interviews do not announce, “Hello, this is a sliding window problem.”

Start doing mixed sets.

A good Week 9 daily session:

1. Pick 2 random medium problems.
2. Set a 35-minute timer for each.
3. Talk through the solution.
4. Write clean code.
5. Test with 3 cases.
6. Review immediately.

You also need a communication script.

Use this flow:

1. Clarify: “Can values be negative? Can input be empty?”
2. Restate: “So we need to return the shortest substring that contains all characters.”
3. Brute force: “A simple approach is checking all substrings.”
4. Improve: “We can avoid repeated work using a sliding window.”
5. Code: Explain big steps, not every keystroke.
6. Test: Walk through a normal case and edge case.
7. Complexity: Time and space.

This is important because many candidates can solve the problem silently but fail the interview vibe.

At Meta, for example, speed and communication matter a lot. At Google, interviewers often value problem decomposition and correctness. At Amazon, you may also get leadership principle follow-ups in the same loop.

Week 10: Online Assessments and Company-Specific Practice#

Online assessments are a different beast. You are usually alone, timed, and judged by hidden test cases.

Companies that often use online assessments or coding screens include:

• Amazon
• Google
• TikTok
• Uber
• Stripe
• Roblox
• Bloomberg
• Databricks
• Palantir
• Coinbase
• DoorDash

FAANG online assessments usually test:

1. Arrays and strings
2. Hash maps
3. Sorting
4. Greedy
5. Graphs
6. Dynamic programming
7. Simulation

For Week 10, do two full online assessment simulations.

Rules:

• 70 to 90 minutes
• 2 problems
• No hints
• No pausing
• Use only your chosen language
• Write final code like it matters

After each simulation, review hidden case failures.

Common hidden test case issues:

• Empty arrays
• Integer overflow in Java or C++
• Duplicate values
• Off-by-one errors
• Negative numbers
• Large input causing timeout
• Mutating input when you should not
• Not resetting global variables

If you are targeting Amazon SDE I or SDE II, also prepare behavioral stories using their Leadership Principles. If you are targeting Google, practice explaining tradeoffs clearly. If you are targeting Meta, practice faster coding and concise communication.

Week 11: Mock Interview Week#

Week 11 is uncomfortable on purpose.

You need at least 4 mock interviews this week.

Options:

• Friend or coworker
• Interviewing.io
• Pramp
• Exponent
• Formation
• Tech mock interview groups
• Senior engineer from your network

Do not only mock with people who are too nice. You need feedback that stings a little.

Ask your mock interviewer to rate:

1. Problem understanding
2. Communication
3. Speed
4. Code quality
5. Testing
6. Edge cases
7. Complexity analysis
8. Calmness under pressure

After each mock, write:

• What went well?
• Where did I get stuck?
• Did I need hints?
• Did I overtalk?
• Did I go silent?
• Did I test properly?
• What pattern did I miss?

By this week, your goal is not to solve every problem. Your goal is to look hireable while thinking.

That means:

• You ask good questions.
• You do not panic.
• You choose a reasonable approach.
• You write code that mostly works.
• You test thoughtfully.
• You discuss tradeoffs.

A perfect solution with terrible communication can still fail. A solid solution with clear thinking often passes.

Week 12: Final Review and Interview Readiness#

Week 12 is not the time to learn 15 brand-new topics. That is how you create chaos in your own brain.

This week, review your mistake log.

Group mistakes into categories:

1. Pattern recognition mistakes
2. Syntax mistakes
3. Edge case mistakes
4. Complexity mistakes
5. Communication mistakes
6. Panic mistakes
7. Time management mistakes

Then fix the biggest repeat offenders.

Your final week schedule could be:

• Monday: Arrays, strings, hash maps review
• Tuesday: Trees and graphs review
• Wednesday: DP and greedy review
• Thursday: Full mock interview
• Friday: Company-specific review
• Saturday: Light practice and behavioral prep
• Sunday: Rest

Yes, rest. Do not walk into a Google interview half-dead because you solved 14 problems the night before.

The day before your interview:

• Review templates.
• Review 10 old mistakes.
• Prepare your environment.
• Sleep properly.
• Do not start a hard DP problem at 11:30 p.m.
• Prepare questions for the interviewer.

Good questions to ask:

• “What does success look like for this role in the first six months?”
• “How does the team review code and design decisions?”
• “What types of projects would this person likely work on?”
• “How is engineering quality balanced with product speed?”

What to Study If You Only Have 4 Weeks#

Sometimes interviews appear fast. Recruiter sends the email, and suddenly your Google phone screen is in 19 days. Cute.

If you only have 4 weeks, cut the plan down.

Week 1: Core Patterns

Study:

• Arrays
• Strings
• Hash maps
• Two pointers
• Sliding window
• Sorting

Do 25 to 35 problems.

Week 2: Trees, Graphs, and Binary Search

Study:

• DFS
• BFS
• Binary search
• Tree recursion
• Grid traversal

Do 25 to 30 problems.

Week 3: Heaps, Intervals, Greedy, DP Basics

Study:

• Top K
• Merge intervals
• Meeting rooms
• Coin Change
• House Robber
• Longest Increasing Subsequence

Do 20 to 25 problems.

Week 4: Mixed Timed Practice

Do:

• 4 mock interviews
• 4 timed random sets
• Mistake review every day
• Company-specific top questions

This is not ideal, but it can work if you already have decent coding foundations.

How Many Problems Should You Solve?#

People love asking this because they want a magic number.

Here is the honest answer:

• Minimum serious prep: 100 to 150 problems
• Strong prep: 180 to 250 problems
• Very strong prep: 300+ problems, with review
• Random grinding with no review: somehow still bad after 500 problems

Quality beats raw count.

A good 150-problem set can beat a sloppy 400-problem grind if you review deeply and repeat missed patterns.

Your problem mix should look roughly like this:

• Arrays and strings: 25%
• Hash maps and sorting: 15%
• Trees: 15%
• Graphs: 15%
• Dynamic programming: 15%
• Heaps and intervals: 10%
• Linked lists, stacks, queues: 5%

Adjust based on your weak spots.

The Biggest Prep Mistakes Candidates Make#

Let’s save you some pain.

Mistake 1: Watching Too Many Solutions

Watching NeetCode, YouTube, or course videos is helpful. But watching is not the same as solving.

Use videos after you have struggled properly.

A good rule:

• Try for 25 to 35 minutes.
• If stuck, read one hint.
• Try again for 10 minutes.
• Then watch or read the solution.
• Recode it from memory the next day.

Mistake 2: Not Repeating Problems

If you miss a problem, revisit it.

Use this schedule:

• Revisit after 1 day
• Revisit after 1 week
• Revisit after 3 weeks

If you still cannot solve it, it is not “done.”

Mistake 3: Ignoring Behavioral Prep

Yes, this article is about coding. Still, behavioral interviews matter.

Prepare stories for:

• Conflict
• Failure
• Ownership
• Ambiguous project
• Tight deadline
• Technical disagreement
• Mentoring
• Impact

Amazon is famous for this, but Meta, Apple, Netflix, and Google also care about how you work with humans. Shocking, I know.

Mistake 4: Never Practicing Out Loud

Your bedroom brain and interview brain are not the same.

Practice saying:

• “Let me think through the brute force first.”
• “The bottleneck is this nested loop.”
• “We can improve by storing previous values.”
• “I want to test the edge case where the array is empty.”
• “The time complexity is O(n), and the space is O(n).”

You will sound much better in the real thing.

Final Checklist Before Your FAANG Interview#

Use this the week before your interview.

You should be able to:

• Solve most medium array and string problems in 30 minutes.
• Recognize common tree and graph patterns.
• Explain BFS and DFS clearly.
• Write binary search without endless off-by-one bugs.
• Handle at least basic DP.
• Solve Top K and interval problems.
• Talk through your approach calmly.
• Test your code with normal and edge cases.
• Explain time and space complexity.
• Share 6 to 8 strong behavioral stories.

You do not need to be perfect. You need to be prepared enough that one weird problem does not destroy the whole interview.

Final Thoughts#

FAANG coding interview prep in 2026 is still hard, but it is not mysterious. The candidates who win are usually not the ones who memorize the most. They are the ones who practice patterns, review mistakes, communicate clearly, and show up calm enough to think.

If you follow this 12-week plan, you will build the kind of interview muscle that works not just for Google, Meta, Amazon, Apple, and Netflix, but also for Stripe, Databricks, Uber, Airbnb, Bloomberg, and many high-paying startups.

And before you send applications, do not let your resume get filtered before a human even sees it. Run it through JobRise’s free ATS checker here: https://jobrise.io/en/free-ats-checker/