My Figma Interview Journey: Real Questions, Prep Challenges, and What I Learned Along the Way

Landing a role at Figma felt like a huge challenge. Figma tests real skills, not just theory. I faced coding puzzles, system design, and tricky figma scenarios. My journey had tough moments—sometimes I missed small figma details or got stuck during a figma live session. If you want to tackle figma with confidence, tools like Linkjob.ai made a real difference for me. I want to help you face these questions with less stress and more clarity.

Figma Data Science OA on Byteboard, three sections: SQL, Python, and writing a short essay. It's quite different from other interview platforms—120 minutes total, with a five-minute break between the second and third parts. Each section gives you a Google Docs-like word document to type your answers in, including the coding part.

Followed by two virtual interviews: one case study and one behavioral. The behavioral questions are pretty common, like your challenges and stuff. The case study was conducted by a Chinese young lady—she's really nice and explains the problems very clearly. For preparation, I suggest searching online for some case study A/B testing frameworks and watching mock interviews on YouTube.

Overall feeling: Figma's recruitment team is truly the nicest one I've ever seen. The HR is very helpful, and email communication is spot on. But for SQL, I still recommend preparing proficiently before the interview—45 minutes to complete 4 questions in total, which is a bit challenging.

Key Takeaways

• Figma interview questions focus on real-world problems, testing coding skills, system design, and teamwork.

• Prepare by practicing coding challenges, understanding system design for real-time collaboration, and sharing clear stories in behavioral rounds.

• Manage your time well during prep and interviews; set goals, take breaks, and avoid spending too long on one problem.

• Use tools like Linkjob.ai to simulate real interviews, get instant feedback, and build confidence.

• Stay positive, admit what you don’t know, and treat every interview as a chance to learn and grow.

Figma Interview Questions

When I started preparing for figma interview questions, I realized how much they focus on real-world scenarios. The process felt intense, but it gave me a clear sense of what figma values in their candidates. Let me break down the types of figma interview questions I faced and how you can tackle them.

Coding Questions

Figma interview questions often start with hands-on coding. I remember sitting in a pair programming session, staring at a whiteboard, and being asked to build a document system with layers. The interviewer wanted me to support undo and redo, just like in the actual figma product. Here are some of the most common coding challenges I encountered:

1. Implementing data structures like hash tables, stacks, or linked lists.

2. Solving algorithmic problems, such as the knapsack problem.

3. Debugging performance issues in figma plugins.

4. Handling edge cases in data structure implementations.

5. Designing new features for figma, like custom animations.

6. Debugging stability issues in plugins.

7. Ensuring plugin compatibility across browsers.

8. Optimizing plugin performance.

Specific figma coding interview questions:

1.Layer and Document Management (Initialization, Apply, Layer Query, Undo)

Question Description: There's a document with layers, each layer has properties, and you need to implement four functions: an initialization function.

• initial => Initialize your data structure.

• apply => Change a layer's property.

• layer(id) => Return this layer.

• undo => Undo one apply.

class Layer {
    String id;
    Map<String, String> properties;

    Layer(String id, Map<String, String> properties) {  // Note: Original text had String properties, but it should be Map
        this.id = id;
        this.properties = properties;
    }
}

class Document {
    Document(Layer[] layers) {  // Initialize Document
        // Implementation logic
    };

    Layer layerId(String id) {  // Return Layer
        // Implementation logic
    }

    void apply(String id, String property, String value) {  // Modify property
        // Implementation logic
    }

    void undo() {  // Undo operation
        // Implementation logic
    }
}

Key Points: Need to maintain historical states (e.g., using a stack for snapshots) to support undo. Interviews may test data structure design and edge cases.

2.Ctrl+Z and Ctrl+Shift+Z Operations (Undo/Redo)

• Question Description: Implement operations like Ctrl+Z (undo) and Ctrl+Shift+Z (redo) for specific functions. The questions are well-organized and interesting.

• Lessons: The onsite rounds are meaningful, but information delivery can be poor. Despite confirming the interview language with HR in advance, the interviewer might not be familiar with the language you use (e.g., something like "west ten ten"), leading to a lot of time spent on conversions and little time left for coding, resulting in failure. Although HR and interviewers said it was fine, it might have been a key reason for rejection. Follow-up: May extend to batch commits, but be careful with state overwrites.

3.Phone Screen - Layers Question

Question Description: The Layers question discussed a lot on forums. I wrote it in C++, but made a low-level mistake during initialization by storing a local variable address from a range-loop into a member variable, causing a weird crash. Debugged for a long time before spotting and fixing the basic requirements (during which the interviewer didn't help at all, probably because they didn't know C++).

Follow-up: Commit batch, but I foolishly overwrote some states. Luckily, the interviewer (a nice white guy) let me pass, and I got a VO notice a week later.

Lessons: I personally don't like "pair programming" style interviews, especially those that require checking execution results. Many judgments are based on how many test cases pass. In that case, why not just use OA to replace phone screens like Circle does?

Onsite Round 2 - Pair Programming (File System Simulation)

• Question Description: The file system is represented as a tree, each file has its own user access permissions. Given a user, find the topmost files that the target user can access. The concept is super simple, but there's a ton of code to handle ID-to-object mapping and some small details. Feels like Figma loves this type of question. Follow-up: If I move a file, what changes in the output of the first question.

• Figma often gives this kind of question. Pay attention to small details and mapping handling.

System Design

System design rounds in figma interview questions felt like a deep dive into how the product works behind the scenes. I had two rounds: one focused on figma components, and the other tailored to my role. The first round asked me to design a real-time trending system, similar to how figma might track popular files or comments. The second round pushed me to think about scaling and storage.

• I had to design a system that supports multiple users editing the same document at once. This is a core challenge in figma, where real-time collaboration is everything.

• Sometimes, the interviewer gave me a public guide to figma components and asked me to build features around them.

• I also got questions about designing a poll system within figma, which tested my understanding of concurrent users and data consistency.

Note: Figma interview questions in system design often focus on live-updating documents and handling many collaborators. If you want to stand out, get comfortable with real-time collaboration systems.

One memorable moment: I had to explain how I’d update comments in real time. The interviewer wanted to see my data model and server architecture. I realized figma cares about practical, scalable solutions, not just textbook answers.

Specific figma coding system design interview questions:

1. Real-Time Trending System

   Question Description: Design a real-time hot search system. Performance and scalability requirements are very low (maybe QPS as low as 1/s), data volume small (a few KB per transmission).

   High-Concurrency Scenario Extension (Interviewer's Thoughts): For more complex high-concurrency cases: Supplementary content (2021-11-01 02:09 +8:00): Brief overview of Trending system supplement: Another variant of Bloom Filter is CountMin Sketch: Consider a 2D array where column coordinates idx represent Bloom Filter bit info, rows are different hash functions. For a topic T, hash with different functions to get Bloom Filter bit info and accumulate in the table at corresponding positions. Also record the minimum value among all operated bits as the current topic's heat estimate. Advantages: Constant space, total space O(HWS) where HashFunctionNumber H, bit width W, and statistic count S can be calculated for error rate via Bloom Filter formulas. Disadvantages: Prone to errors. Consider a group of hot topics overlapping hashes with a cold topic; the cold one might get a high heat value -> even higher than the hottest in the group. Or, this Bloom Filter's feature is that the value isn't necessarily a true lower bound; the value is a true upper bound, but the gap to real value is unrelated. This system might not tolerate such false positives.

   Lessons: With actual QPS low, any setup should work fine. But interviewers often think of complex, large-scale systems for reliability and efficiency. For these low-QPS services, many operations seem like over-engineering. No specific follow-up feedback yet. Training encourages different solutions as long as they're reasonable and meet requirements, but in practice, especially at smaller companies, if you don't "exactly" match their actual solution, outcomes might not be good. Really need to understand their tech stack and cater to it. For big companies, it's different; as long as it's logical, most interviewers don't care about specifics and might even endorse alternative effective solutions.

2. Online PPT Template System

   Question Description: Design a system for online PPT templates and generating PPT instances from templates. When templates update, push notifications to users, who decide whether to use the updated template.

   Key Points: Low performance requirements, small data. Avoid over-engineering (e.g., high-concurrency optimizations).

   Lessons: Same as above; encourages different schemes, but smaller companies need to match actual solutions.

3. Onsite Round 4 - Real-Time Figma Comments Update

   Question Description: How to update Figma comments in real time. I really liked this question because it directly says to design the data model first, then the server architecture. Lets the interviewer know the actual expectations, rather than blindly following a formula. Of course, I understand that senior+ engineers need to break down very ambiguous problems step by step, but in a short hour, no matter your approach, the interviewer can always interrupt and pivot anywhere (will post more details later).

   Lessons: Senior+ needs ambiguity-handling skills, but this question was friendly.

   Onsite Round 5 - Top K Hot Files

   Question Description: The top k hot files question shared before. The interviewer seemed to have no backend or distributed systems experience, so after I spent 30 minutes on basic solution + cache, the interviewer said you've covered our expected answer, use the remaining time freely. So I mentioned the "lambda architecture" I'd seen before (which is basically fast path and slow path), not sure if I explained it right, but since I hit the standard answer, the rest was free play :p

   Lessons: After expected answers, you can expand freely. Interviewer experience affects depth.

Behavioral Questions

Behavioral rounds in figma interview questions dig into your soft skills. The interviewers want to know how you communicate, solve problems, and fit into the team. Here are some of the questions I faced:

• "Describe a time when you had to explain a complex technical concept to a non-technical audience."

• "How do you handle feedback and criticism?"

• "Can you give an example of a successful collaboration with a cross-functional team?"

• "Why do you want to work at figma?"

They also asked about conflict resolution and adaptability. I learned to use the STAR method (Situation, Task, Action, Result) to structure my answers. Figma values candidates who can balance quick problem-solving with long-term thinking. They want people who communicate clearly and accept feedback.

Pro tip: Prepare stories that show how you handled challenges, worked with different teams, and grew from feedback. Figma interview questions often explore how you align with the company’s values and culture.

I once shared a story about a project where I had to mediate between designers and engineers. The interviewer wanted to see how I resolved disagreements and kept the team moving forward. Figma’s product thrives on collaboration, so they look for people who can work well with others.

Preparation Challenges

Interviewing at figma pushed me out of my comfort zone. I faced a bunch of technical challenges at figma, but the real struggle came from the prep itself. Let me walk you through the biggest hurdles I hit and how I tackled them.

Technical Gaps

I didn’t know every figma feature inside out. Sometimes, I’d get a question about undo/redo logic or file system simulation and realize my background was missing a piece. Instead of pretending I knew it all, I learned to admit my gaps. I showed excitement for the role and leaned on my experience with similar tools. Staying positive helped me keep moving forward, even when my figma knowledge felt thin.

• I made a list of figma concepts I didn’t know.

• I watched tutorials and read docs to fill those gaps.

• I practiced coding problems that matched figma’s style.

Time Management

Balancing figma prep with work and life felt tough. I had to split my time between coding, system design, and behavioral questions. Sometimes, I’d spend too long debugging a single problem and run out of time for other topics.

Communication Issues

Pair programming at figma tested my communication skills. One time, the interviewer didn’t know my coding language well. I had to switch languages on the spot, which slowed me down. Clear communication made a huge difference, especially when tackling ambiguous figma interview questions.

Interview Anxiety

I felt nervous before every figma interview. My heart raced and my mind spun with “what ifs.” I started sharing my worries with friends, which helped a lot. I also made sure to get enough sleep and take breaks outside. Doing things I enjoyed, like listening to music, kept me calm. If you feel anxious, talk to someone you trust and take care of yourself. Figuring out what triggers your nerves can help you stay focused.

Remember, everyone gets nervous. Find what works for you and stick with it.

Overcoming Obstacles

Study Strategies

I broke my study sessions into small, focused blocks. I set clear goals for each week, like mastering undo/redo logic or practicing file system simulations. I tracked my progress in a notebook. If I missed a goal, I adjusted my plan instead of stressing out. I spent time on hands-on figma training, building mini-projects that mirrored real figma features. For example, I recreated a simple document editor and practiced adding layers, properties, and undo functionality. This approach helped me spot gaps in my knowledge and gave me confidence for the next round.

Tip: Review your mistakes after each practice session. I always wrote down what went wrong and how I could fix it. This habit made me better at handling figma interview curveballs.

Practice with Linkjob.ai

I wanted my figma prep to feel like the real thing. Linkjob.ai made that possible. The platform let me run mock interviews with realistic figma questions. I could choose coding, system design, or behavioral sessions. After each practice, I got instant feedback on my strengths and areas to improve. The voice response feature helped me get comfortable answering behavioral questions out loud. I liked the follow-up questions—they felt just like the ones I got in actual figma interviews. The detailed reports showed me where I needed more work. Practicing with Linkjob.ai gave me a safe space to make mistakes and learn fast.

Staying Motivated

Staying motivated during figma prep was tough. I set small goals and celebrated when I hit them. I picked projects that excited me, like designing a plugin or solving a tricky figma system design problem. I balanced learning with breaks, making sure I got enough sleep and fresh air. I reminded myself why I wanted to join figma—not just for the job, but for the chance to build cool things. I talked to friends and asked for help when I felt stuck. I kept my confidence up by working on mini-projects and sharing my progress with others. When setbacks happened, I saw them as chances to grow. I focused on the future and used each challenge as a springboard.

Note: Confidence comes from action. Every time I finished a practice session or solved a figma problem, I felt stronger. Real-time feedback and support from others kept me moving forward.

Lessons and Tips

Advice for Candidates

If you’re preparing for Figma, here’s what helped me most:

• Practice telling stories that show your skills. Use real examples from past projects.

• Review Figma’s core values: Have Fun, Be Bold, and Foster Inclusivity. Think about how you align with them.

• Manage your time during design challenges. Don’t spend too long on one step.

• Show versatility in your work. Bring examples that highlight different skills.

• Always follow up after interviews. A thank-you note goes a long way.

Here’s a quick checklist to avoid common mistakes:

Using Linkjob.ai

Practicing with Linkjob.ai made my Figma prep much smoother. I could simulate real Figma interview questions and get instant feedback. The platform let me focus on my weak spots, whether it was coding, system design, or behavioral questions. I used the voice input feature to practice answering , which boosted my confidence for the real thing. The detailed reports helped me track my progress and adjust my study plan. If you want to prepare for Figma interviews in a way that feels real, Linkjob.ai is a great tool to have in your corner.

Looking back, I faced all kinds of figma interview questions, from coding to system design and behavioral rounds. The biggest challenges came from filling technical gaps, managing my time, and staying calm under pressure. What helped me most was learning from real experiences and using smart tools like Linkjob.ai. This platform gave me real-time feedback, helped me practice figma scenarios, and boosted my confidence.

• Figma values creativity, collaboration, and passion for their product.

• Linkjob.ai supports candidates with instant feedback and AI-powered tips.

If you want to succeed at figma, start your prep early, learn from others, and use every tool you can. You’ve got this!

FAQ

What was the toughest Figma interview question i faced?

The hardest one asked me to build an undo/redo system for document layers. I had to handle edge cases and explain my logic. I practiced similar problems before, but this one really tested my understanding.

How did you prepare for Figma’s system design rounds?

I broke down real Figma features, like real-time comments and file access. I drew diagrams and explained my choices. Practicing with mock interviews on Linkjob.ai helped me get comfortable with open-ended questions.

What should I do if I get stuck during a Figma coding interview?

I pause, take a breath, and talk through my thought process. I ask clarifying questions if something feels unclear. Interviewers want to see how I solve problems, not just the final answer.

How important are behavioral questions in the Figma interview?

They matter a lot! I shared stories about teamwork and conflict resolution. Figma looks for people who fit their culture and communicate well. I always used real examples from my past projects.

Can Linkjob.ai really help with Figma interview prep?

Absolutely! I used Linkjob.ai for mock interviews with real Figma interview questions. The instant feedback and practice sessions made me feel ready for anything the interviewers threw at me.

See Also

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