Recently, a classmate just left Adobe The complete interview process, from OA to VO, to Onsite, is three rounds. The overall rhythm is compact but not oppressive. Unlike many purely algorithm-oriented companies, Adobe interviews place more emphasis on engineering capabilities and systems thinking - the questions may not be the most difficult, but if you just stop at "can do it", it is often not enough. What they want to see more is code quality, architectural judgment, and the way you think in a real development environment. The following is a complete review of the entire process to provide a more intuitive reference for students who are preparing for Adobe.
OA link
OA has a total of two algorithm questions, which are generally in the easy-medium range. There are no obvious partial or strange questions, but time management is very important. Many people will invest too much time on the first question, causing the rhythm of the rest to be disrupted.
The first question is a typical array operation problem, focusing on logical processing and boundary condition control. The question itself is not complicated, but if the idea is not determined quickly at the beginning, it is easy to constantly modify it during the implementation process, and time is quietly consumed.
The second question is string processing, which is closer to the conventional algorithm model. What really widens the gap is not "whether you can write", but whether the code is clean enough, whether the complexity is reasonable, and whether the structure is clear and readable.
Many candidates default to having two AC questions to be safe, but judging from feedback, Adobe is more concerned about whether your thinking path is natural, whether you actively optimize, and whether your code is close to production level. In other words, writing beautifully is sometimes more important than writing quickly.
VO electric surface (45 min)
The overall atmosphere of this round is usually relatively relaxed, and the interviewer does not deliberately create pressure. It is more like assessing whether you have the communication and design skills of a mature engineer.
The opening usually starts with self-introduction and Why Adobe. It is not recommended to just say that the platform is big or developing well, but try to combine it with products, such as the ecosystem of Creative Cloud, long-term investment in user experience, or the technical challenges behind creator tools. It can show that you "understand" the company, not overseas investment.
Then enter the system design question: design a real-time collaborative editing system, similar to Adobe's cloud multi-person editing scenario.
A common and sound idea is to use WebSocket to handle real-time communication, manage session status through Redis or other in-memory stores, and then use a database for persistence. At the same time, OT or CRDT can be discussed to resolve multi-person editing conflicts.
Interviewers usually continue deep dives, such as how to ensure consistency, how to handle conflicts, how to deal with network jitters, how to support large-scale user expansion, etc. A very critical bonus point here - don't just list components, be sure to discuss trade-off. For example, the choice between strong consistency and eventual consistency, the complexity difference between OT and CRDT, and the balance between latency and correctness.
Even if some details are not answered to the extreme, as long as the structure is clear and the reasoning is smooth, the overall evaluation is usually not bad.
Onsite
The total duration of Onsite is about 3 hours, but because each round requires continuous output of thinking, the physical experience is often longer than expected. The overall inspection logic is very unified: don't pursue fancy, but see whether you can join the team and do things directly.
First round of Coding
The topic is a classic design: implement an LRU Cache that supports get and put, and ensures O(1) time complexity.
The mainstream solution is still HashMap combined with Doubly Linked List, which maintains the most recently used order through head and tail pointers. The real difficulty in this question is not the algorithm, but whether the implementation details are clean and the structure is clear.
The interviewer often does not stop at writing the code, but continues to ask questions. What if we need to support concurrency? Can the space be optimized? Is there a more reasonable strategy when the capacity is extremely large?
One obvious touch of style is that Adobe doesn't encourage over-design. Rather than ostentatious optimization, they want to see code that is readable, maintainable, and in line with team collaboration habits. Many times, "code that colleagues are willing to take over" is more important than extreme performance.
Second Round System Design
This round is usually the one with the highest weight. The topic direction is to design a distributed file storage system, which needs to support large file uploads, breakpoint resume uploads and multi-user access, while ensuring high reliability.
A more natural way to expand is to start with chunk upload, combine it with Object Storage to store files, manage indexes through Metadata Service, and then cooperate with CDN to improve download speed. Multi-region deployments can also be discussed to enhance availability.
Interviewers especially like to ask about failure scenarios, such as how to restore a system after it crashes, how to back up data, how to avoid file damage, how to design the permission system, etc. What high-scoring candidates often have in common is that they always think about problems from the perspective of the production environment, not just drawing architecture diagrams, but "operating a system."
If you can consistently focus on scalability, reliability, and failure handling, it usually gives the interviewer a very strong engineering signal.
Third round BQ
The Behavioral section isn't usually tricky, but it's critical. Classic questions include telling a story about a teamwork experience and a story about overcoming an obstacle.
When answering, try to avoid anecdotes, and instead emphasize what decisions you made, why you did them, and what the final results were. Ownership, impact and problem-solving are three very frequently evaluated dimensions.
Adobe's culture is collaborative, so they will pay special attention to one thing: if you join the team, whether you are easy to cooperate, whether the communication is smooth, and whether you are reliable when encountering problems. Technology determines the lower limit, but in many cases, BQ decides the offer.
Write at the end
We have long-term supply to major North American manufacturers Interview assistance services , has helped many students successfully pass OA, VO and Onsite. For companies like Adobe that value engineering capabilities and system design, we will systematically sort out high-frequency test points and deep dive directions to help you answer more steadily during the interview.
If you are about to have an interview in the near future, or have already entered the process but are not sure enough, it is recommended to prepare as early as possible. If you want to get the latest real questions and targeted preparation solutions, please contact us directly - effective preparation is often the key to getting an offer.
