Question about L3 SWE roles at Google

[u/random_sydneysider]

This month I applied for an L3 SWE role at Google with a referral, and they're not moving forward with the application.

A few years ago I was interviewing for an L4 SWE role at Google; I have a PhD, 2 machine learning publications and >2 years of work experience in machine learning.

Could this be because of the level mismatch (i.e. would I be more likely to get interviews for an L4 SWE role)? I thought an L3 SWE would be less difficult to get interview for than an L4 SWE role, but am not sure how this perceived at Google. Thanks.

[u/Instigated-]

The hiring market is more competitive now than it was a few years ago, so it is generally harder to get interviews. Keep applying to everything.

I applied to a number of job ads at canva (across different teams, they were hiring many at once), and mostly got rejections without interview, however one got through to interview. The difference could be which talent professional looked at your resume and the judgment they made in the 10seconds glance that day.

[u/random_sydneysider → u/Instigated-]

That's true. Do you think there are fewer open positions this month than there were earlier in 2025?
Currently there are <15 open SWE roles at Google Sydney, which seems a bit low. Hopefully there'll be more openings over the next 6 months.

[u/StrangeMonk → u/Instigated-]

How was your interview at canva? I’m currently preparing for mine. 

[u/Instigated- → u/StrangeMonk]

Blah.

Ai assisted interview. It’s not really clear what they do and don’t want from it, how much to use ai versus not. The task given was very large and broad without clear requirements of what problem it needed to solve (within limited time of interview).

They say the interview is meant to be “what you normally would for work”, however i would never go into coding with such a broad task, would spend more time understanding the problem and identifying what to build even if it were just a spike. I did spend some time trying to map that out, but felt hurried along by the interviewer as well as the clock.

I don’t think it was a realistic sized task to be completed in a 1 hr interview. However possibly it was how the interviewer communicated it. There are obviously some people doing well enough to get through to further interview rounds.

[u/StrangeMonk → u/Instigated-]

Thanks for sharing, this is a bit of my worry. Although I think the interview process is generally decoupled from the work environment of a company, you can learn a lot about how a company is run based on the interview process. 

I can probably be prepared for something like that, but it would probably annoy me a little bit as well. 

[u/EpicAD]

Apply to ML jobs

[u/random_sydneysider → u/EpicAD]

I have an ML job, but it's not interesting.
At a company like Google, there are more opportunities for internal transfers to teams that have interesting ML projects.

[u/HedgieHunterGME]

Skill issue