Skip to content
DSA Grind
All 26 sections

DSA — Top Questions Being Asked at MAANG (2026)

NoteUpdated
On this page

Curated from current LeetCode company tags, NeetCode 150, FAANG-Coding-Interview-Questions, and 2026 interview write-ups (Glassdoor, Medium, LeetCode Discuss). Tick as you go. Difficulty: 🟢 Easy 🟡 Medium 🔴 Hard

0. Pattern frequency at MAANG (2026)

Pattern Amazon Meta Google Apple Netflix Your DSA folder
Two Pointers ★★ ★★ ★ ★ ★ 01-Two-Pointers/
Sliding Window ★★★ ★★★ ★★ ★ ★ 02-Sliding-Window/
Hashing / Freq Map ★★★ ★★★ ★★ ★★ ★★ 03-Hashing-Frequency-Maps/
Fast & Slow ★ ★ ★ ★ – 04-Fast-And-Slow-Pointers/
Merge Intervals ★★ ★★ ★★ ★ ★★ 05-Merge-Intervals/
Cyclic Sort ★ ★ ★ – – 06-Cyclic-Sort/
LL Reversal ★ ★★ ★ ★ – 07-Linked-List-Reversal/
BFS ★★★ ★★★ ★★★ ★★ ★★ 08-BFS/
DFS ★★★ ★★★ ★★★ ★★ ★★ 09-DFS/
Two Heaps ★★ ★★ ★ ★ ★ 10-Two-Heaps/
Backtracking ★★ ★★★ ★★ ★ ★ 11-Backtracking-Subsets/
Modified Binary Search ★★ ★★ ★★★ ★★ ★ 12-Binary-Search/
Top-K Elements ★★★ ★★ ★★ ★★ ★★ 13-Top-K-Elements/
Dynamic Programming ★★ ★★ ★★★ ★★ ★★ 14-Dynamic-Programming/
Union-Find ★ ★★★ ★★★ ★ ★ (add — gap!)
Tries ★ ★★ ★★ ★ – (add)
Greedy ★★ ★★ ★★ ★ ★ (add)

★★★ = asked in nearly every loop; ★ = occasional. Stars from a synthesis of 2024–26 LC discuss + Glassdoor + IGotAnOffer write-ups.

1. The MUST-DO 50 (do these first — Weeks 1–4)

This is your Blind 75 core, pruned to the 50 actually-asked in 2024–26.

Arrays & Hashing

  • 🟢 Two Sum (LC 1) — Amazon, Meta, Apple
  • 🟡 Group Anagrams (LC 49) — Amazon, Meta
  • 🟡 Top K Frequent Elements (LC 347) — Amazon, Meta
  • 🟡 Product of Array Except Self (LC 238) — Amazon, Meta, Apple
  • 🟡 Longest Consecutive Sequence (LC 128) — Meta, Google
  • 🟡 Valid Sudoku (LC 36) — Apple, Amazon
  • 🟢 Contains Duplicate (LC 217) — warm-up

Two Pointers

  • 🟢 Valid Palindrome (LC 125) — Meta (very common)
  • 🟡 3Sum (LC 15) — Amazon, Meta, Google
  • 🟡 Container With Most Water (LC 11) — Meta, Amazon
  • 🔴 Trapping Rain Water (LC 42) — Amazon, Google ★★★

Sliding Window

  • 🟡 Longest Substring Without Repeating Characters (LC 3) — Amazon, Meta, Google
  • 🟡 Longest Repeating Character Replacement (LC 424) — Meta
  • 🔴 Minimum Window Substring (LC 76) — Amazon, Meta
  • 🔴 Sliding Window Maximum (LC 239) — Amazon, Microsoft

Stack

  • 🟢 Valid Parentheses (LC 20) — universal
  • 🟡 Daily Temperatures (LC 739) — Amazon, Google
  • 🟡 Car Fleet (LC 853) — Google
  • 🟡 Search in Rotated Sorted Array (LC 33) — Amazon, Meta
  • 🟡 Find Minimum in Rotated Sorted Array (LC 153) — Amazon
  • 🔴 Median of Two Sorted Arrays (LC 4) — Google, Apple
  • 🟡 Koko Eating Bananas (LC 875) — Google ★★

Linked List

  • 🟢 Reverse Linked List (LC 206) — Meta, Amazon (still asked)
  • 🟡 Merge Two Sorted Lists (LC 21) — universal
  • 🟡 Reorder List (LC 143) — Meta, Amazon
  • 🟡 LRU Cache (LC 146) — Amazon ★★★, Meta
  • 🔴 Merge K Sorted Lists (LC 23) — Amazon, Meta

Trees

  • 🟢 Invert Binary Tree (LC 226) — universal
  • 🟡 Validate BST (LC 98) — Amazon, Apple
  • 🟡 LCA of a BST (LC 235) — Meta, Amazon
  • 🟡 Binary Tree Level Order Traversal (LC 102) — Amazon, Meta — Meta 2026 variant: min element per level
  • 🟡 Construct Binary Tree from Preorder + Inorder (LC 105) — Google
  • 🔴 Serialize and Deserialize Binary Tree (LC 297) — Meta ★★★, Amazon
  • 🔴 Binary Tree Maximum Path Sum (LC 124) — Meta, Google

Tries

  • 🟡 Implement Trie (LC 208) — Google, Amazon
  • 🟡 Design Add and Search Words (LC 211) — Meta
  • 🔴 Word Search II (LC 212) — Amazon, Google

Heap / Top-K

  • 🟡 Kth Largest Element (LC 215) — Amazon, Meta
  • 🟡 K Closest Points to Origin (LC 973) — Meta 2026 hot pick, Amazon
  • 🔴 Find Median from Data Stream (LC 295) — Amazon, Google (two-heaps)

Backtracking

  • 🟡 Subsets (LC 78) — Meta ★★★
  • 🟡 Combination Sum (LC 39) — Amazon, Meta
  • 🟡 Permutations (LC 46) — Meta
  • 🟡 Word Search (LC 79) — Amazon, Meta
  • 🔴 N-Queens (LC 51) — Google

Graphs

  • 🟡 Number of Islands (LC 200) — Amazon ★★★, Meta
  • 🟡 Clone Graph (LC 133) — Meta
  • 🟡 Course Schedule (LC 207) — Amazon
  • 🟡 Course Schedule II (LC 210) — Amazon, Google, Meta — topo sort
  • 🔴 Alien Dictionary (LC 269) — Google ★★★
  • 🟡 Pacific Atlantic Water Flow (LC 417) — Amazon, Google
  • 🔴 Word Ladder (LC 127) — Amazon, Meta

Dynamic Programming

  • 🟢 Climbing Stairs (LC 70) — warm-up
  • 🟡 House Robber (LC 198) — Amazon
  • 🟡 Longest Palindromic Substring (LC 5) — Amazon, Apple
  • 🟡 Coin Change (LC 322) — Amazon, Google
  • 🟡 Longest Increasing Subsequence (LC 300) — Google
  • 🔴 Edit Distance (LC 72) — Google, Meta
  • 🔴 Regular Expression Matching (LC 10) — Meta, Google
  • 🟡 Subarray Sum Equals K (LC 560) — Meta 2026 hot variant

Greedy / Intervals

  • 🟡 Merge Intervals (LC 56) — Meta ★★★, Google
  • 🟡 Insert Interval (LC 57) — Google, Meta
  • 🟡 Non-overlapping Intervals (LC 435) — Meta
  • 🟡 Meeting Rooms II (LC 253) — Amazon, Meta (LC Premium)
  • 🟡 Jump Game (LC 55) — Amazon

2. 2026 NEW / TRENDING Qs (seen in last 6 months of write-ups)

LC # Title Company Why it’s hot
973 K Closest Points to Origin Meta, Amazon Heap warm-up in phone screen
560 Subarray Sum Equals K Meta Prefix-sum + hashmap test
102 (variant) Min element per level of BT Meta Tree + level traversal twist
1235 Maximum Profit in Job Scheduling Google, Amazon Weighted interval DP
1268 Search Suggestions System Amazon ★★★ Trie + e-commerce framing
1762 Buildings With an Ocean View Meta, Amazon Stack/monotonic
2402 Meeting Rooms III Meta, Amazon Heap + sorting (Meeting Rooms evolution)
1235 Maximum Profit Job Scheduling Google Weighted intervals + DP
2104 Sum of Subarray Ranges Google Monotonic stack
1976 Number of Ways to Arrive at Destination Google Dijkstra + count
295 Find Median from Data Stream Amazon, Google Two-heaps “still hot”

3. Company-specific hot lists (last 6 months)

Amazon (★★★ frequency)

  1. LRU Cache (146)
  2. Number of Islands (200)
  3. Trapping Rain Water (42)
  4. Merge K Sorted Lists (23)
  5. Search Suggestions System (1268)
  6. Top K Frequent Elements (347)
  7. K Closest Points (973)
  8. Word Ladder (127)
  9. Reorganize String (767)
  10. Concatenated Words (472)

Meta (★★★ frequency)

  1. Subsets (78)
  2. Valid Palindrome II (680)
  3. K Closest Points (973)
  4. Subarray Sum Equals K (560)
  5. Random Pick with Weight (528)
  6. Vertical Order Traversal of BT (987)
  7. Lowest Common Ancestor of BT (236)
  8. Merge Intervals (56)
  9. Serialize/Deserialize BT (297)
  10. Buildings With Ocean View (1762)

Google (★★★ frequency)

  1. Alien Dictionary (269)
  2. Decode String (394)
  3. Word Break (139)
  4. Regular Expression Matching (10)
  5. Trapping Rain Water (42)
  6. Snapshot Array (1146)
  7. Evaluate Division (399)
  8. Number of Distinct Islands (694)
  9. Course Schedule II (210)
  10. Maximum Profit Job Scheduling (1235)

Apple

  1. Median of Two Sorted Arrays (4)
  2. LRU Cache (146)
  3. Valid Sudoku (36)
  4. Longest Palindromic Substring (5)
  5. Reverse Linked List (206)

Netflix

  1. Design TinyURL (HLD)
  2. Median from Data Stream (295)
  3. Top K Frequent Words (692)
  4. Merge Intervals (56)
  5. Find All Anagrams in a String (438)

4. How to practice each problem (templated approach)

For every problem on this list:

  1. Read — paraphrase the problem aloud in 1 sentence
  2. Brute force in your head (don’t code) — state TC/SC
  3. Optimize — name the pattern (Two Pointers? Sliding Window? DP?)
  4. Code in 20 min, timer on
  5. Test — 1 happy path + 2 edge cases (empty, single elt, all equal, overflow)
  6. Note pattern in tracker — schedule reviews D+1, D+3, D+7, D+21
  7. If failed — solve again same day after reading editorial, then re-attempt in 3 days

Sources