How often are these problems asked?
Frequency scores are based on crowdsourced interview reports. A higher score means the problem has been reported more often in recent Tesla interviews.
Very Likely
75-100%
Likely
50-74%
Sometimes
25-49%
Rare
0-24%
Problem database last updated: June 20, 2025
43 problems · 13 Easy, 25 Medium, 5 Hard · Ranked #50 of 458
13 Easy
30% · avg 23%
25 Medium
58% · avg 59%
5 Hard
12% · avg 18%
Based on 43 reported problems, Tesla interviews are in line with industry averages - 12% Hard vs 18% overall. The majority (58%) of questions are Medium difficulty, which is typical for companies that want to see solid fundamentals without excessive trick questions.
Compared to the industry average, Tesla puts unusual emphasis on queue (4.7% of problems, 3.2x the industry average), counting (7% of problems, 2.1x the industry average), divide-and-conquer (7% of problems, 1.7x the industry average). If you're short on time, these are the categories to double down on.
The most common topics are array (48.8%), string (37.2%), hash-table (34.9%), sorting (18.6%). Problems below are sorted by frequency, the ones at the top are asked most often.
| Problem | Difficulty | Frequency | Topics | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Longest Substring Without Repeating Characters Given a string s, find the length of the longest substring without duplicate characters. | Medium | Very Likely | hash-tablestringsliding-window | Solve |
Minimum Changes To Make Alternating Binary String You are given a string s consisting only of the characters '0' and '1'. In one operation, you can change any '0' to '1' or vice versa. | Easy | Very Likely | string | Solve |
Find Followers Count Table: Followers | Easy | Very Likely | database | Solve |
Basic Calculator II Given a string s which represents an expression, evaluate this expression and return its value. | Medium | Very Likely | mathstringstack | Solve |
Merge Intervals Given an array of intervals where intervals[i] = [starti, endi], merge all overlapping intervals, and return an array of the non-overlapping intervals that cove... | Medium | Very Likely | arraysorting | Solve |
Number of Islands Given an m x n 2D binary grid grid which represents a map of '1's (land) and '0's (water), return the number of islands. | Medium | Very Likely | arraydepth-first-searchbreadth-first-search | Solve |
Design Circular Queue Design your implementation of the circular queue. The circular queue is a linear data structure in which the operations are performed based on FIFO (First In Fi... | Medium | Very Likely | arraylinked-listdesign | Solve |
Building H2O There are two kinds of threads: oxygen and hydrogen. Your goal is to group these threads to form water molecules. | Medium | Very Likely | concurrency | Solve |
Letter Combinations of a Phone Number Given a string containing digits from 2-9 inclusive, return all possible letter combinations that the number could represent. Return the answer in any order. | Medium | Very Likely | hash-tablestringbacktracking | Solve |
Top K Frequent Elements Given an integer array nums and an integer k, return the k most frequent elements. You may return the answer in any order. | Medium | Very Likely | arrayhash-tabledivide-and-conquer | Solve |
Valid Parentheses Given a string s containing just the characters '(', ')', '{', '}', '[' and ']', determine if the input string is valid. | Easy | Very Likely | stringstack | Solve |
Container With Most Water You are given an integer array height of length n. There are n vertical lines drawn such that the two endpoints of the ith line are (i, 0) and (i, height[i]). | Medium | Very Likely | arraytwo-pointersgreedy | Solve |
LRU Cache Design a data structure that follows the constraints of a Least Recently Used (LRU) cache. | Medium | Very Likely | hash-tablelinked-listdesign | Solve |
Best Time to Buy and Sell Stock You are given an array prices where prices[i] is the price of a given stock on the ith day. | Easy | Very Likely | arraydynamic-programming | Solve |
Subarray Sum Equals K Given an array of integers nums and an integer k, return the total number of subarrays whose sum equals to k. | Medium | Likely | arrayhash-tableprefix-sum | Solve |
Decode the Message You are given the strings key and message, which represent a cipher key and a secret message, respectively. The steps to decode message are as follows: | Easy | Likely | hash-tablestring | Solve |
Maximum Number of Balloons Given a string text, you want to use the characters of text to form as many instances of the word "balloon" as possible. | Easy | Likely | hash-tablestringcounting | Solve |
3Sum Given an integer array nums, return all the triplets [nums[i], nums[j], nums[k]] such that i != j, i != k, and j != k, and nums[i] + nums[j] + nums[k] == 0. | Medium | Likely | arraytwo-pointerssorting | Solve |
Reverse Nodes in k-Group Given the head of a linked list, reverse the nodes of the list k at a time, and return the modified list. | Hard | Likely | linked-listrecursion | Solve |
Move Zeroes Given an integer array nums, move all 0's to the end of it while maintaining the relative order of the non-zero elements. | Easy | Likely | arraytwo-pointers | Solve |
Valid Anagram Given two strings s and t, return true if t is an anagram of s, and false otherwise. | Easy | Likely | hash-tablestringsorting | Solve |
Maximum Subarray Given an integer array nums, find the subarray with the largest sum, and return its sum. | Medium | Likely | arraydivide-and-conquerdynamic-programming | Solve |
Max Area of Island You are given an m x n binary matrix grid. An island is a group of 1's (representing land) connected 4-directionally (horizontal or vertical.) You may assume al... | Medium | Likely | arraydepth-first-searchbreadth-first-search | Solve |
Reorganize String Given a string s, rearrange the characters of s so that any two adjacent characters are not the same. | Medium | Likely | hash-tablestringgreedy | Solve |
Largest Perimeter Triangle Given an integer array nums, return the largest perimeter of a triangle with a non-zero area, formed from three of these lengths. If it is impossible to form an... | Easy | Likely | arraymathgreedy | Solve |
Missing Number Given an array nums containing n distinct numbers in the range [0, n], return the only number in the range that is missing from the array. | Easy | Likely | arrayhash-tablemath | Solve |
Longest Palindromic Substring Given a string s, return the longest palindromic substring in s. | Medium | Likely | two-pointersstringdynamic-programming | Solve |
House Robber You are a professional robber planning to rob houses along a street. Each house has a certain amount of money stashed, the only constraint stopping you from rob... | Medium | Likely | arraydynamic-programming | Solve |
Reverse Linked List Given the head of a singly linked list, reverse the list, and return the reversed list. | Easy | Likely | linked-listrecursion | Solve |
Is Subsequence Given two strings s and t, return true if s is a subsequence of t, or false otherwise. | Easy | Likely | two-pointersstringdynamic-programming | Solve |
Group Anagrams Given an array of strings strs, group the anagrams together. You can return the answer in any order. | Medium | Likely | arrayhash-tablestring | Solve |
Trapping Rain Water Given n non-negative integers representing an elevation map where the width of each bar is 1, compute how much water it can trap after raining. | Hard | Likely | arraytwo-pointersdynamic-programming | Solve |
Construct Binary Tree from Preorder and Inorder Traversal Given two integer arrays preorder and inorder where preorder is the preorder traversal of a binary tree and inorder is the inorder traversal of the same tree, c... | Medium | Likely | arrayhash-tabledivide-and-conquer | Solve |
Combination Sum II Given a collection of candidate numbers (candidates) and a target number (target), find all unique combinations in candidates where the candidate numbers sum to... | Medium | Likely | arraybacktracking | Solve |
First Missing Positive Given an unsorted integer array nums. Return the smallest positive integer that is not present in nums. | Hard | Likely | arrayhash-table | Solve |
Simplify Path You are given an absolute path for a Unix-style file system, which always begins with a slash '/'. Your task is to transform this absolute path into its simplif... | Medium | Likely | stringstack | Solve |
Flatten Nested List Iterator You are given a nested list of integers nestedList. Each element is either an integer or a list whose elements may also be integers or other lists. Implement an... | Medium | Likely | stacktreedepth-first-search | Solve |
Course Schedule II There are a total of numCourses courses you have to take, labeled from 0 to numCourses - 1. You are given an array prerequisites where prerequisites[i] = [ai, b... | Medium | Likely | depth-first-searchbreadth-first-searchgraph | Solve |
Basic Calculator Given a string s representing a valid expression, implement a basic calculator to evaluate it, and return the result of the evaluation. | Hard | Likely | mathstringstack | Solve |
Find Minimum in Rotated Sorted Array Suppose an array of length n sorted in ascending order is rotated between 1 and n times. For example, the array nums = [0,1,2,4,5,6,7] might become: | Medium | Likely | arraybinary-search | Solve |
Serialize and Deserialize Binary Tree Serialization is the process of converting a data structure or object into a sequence of bits so that it can be stored in a file or memory buffer, or transmitte... | Hard | Likely | stringtreedepth-first-search | Solve |
Repeated DNA Sequences The DNA sequence is composed of a series of nucleotides abbreviated as 'A', 'C', 'G', and 'T'. | Medium | Likely | hash-tablestringbit-manipulation | Solve |
Find Winner on a Tic Tac Toe Game Tic-tac-toe is played by two players A and B on a 3 x 3 grid. The rules of Tic-Tac-Toe are: | Easy | Likely | arrayhash-tablematrix | Solve |
Longest Substring Without Repeating Characters
SolveGiven a string s, find the length of the longest substring without duplicate characters.
Minimum Changes To Make Alternating Binary String
SolveYou are given a string s consisting only of the characters '0' and '1'. In one operation, you can change any '0' to '1' or vice versa.
Basic Calculator II
SolveGiven a string s which represents an expression, evaluate this expression and return its value.
Merge Intervals
SolveGiven an array of intervals where intervals[i] = [starti, endi], merge all overlapping intervals, and return an array of the non-overlapping intervals that cove...
Number of Islands
SolveGiven an m x n 2D binary grid grid which represents a map of '1's (land) and '0's (water), return the number of islands.
Design Circular Queue
SolveDesign your implementation of the circular queue. The circular queue is a linear data structure in which the operations are performed based on FIFO (First In Fi...
Building H2O
SolveThere are two kinds of threads: oxygen and hydrogen. Your goal is to group these threads to form water molecules.
Letter Combinations of a Phone Number
SolveGiven a string containing digits from 2-9 inclusive, return all possible letter combinations that the number could represent. Return the answer in any order.
Top K Frequent Elements
SolveGiven an integer array nums and an integer k, return the k most frequent elements. You may return the answer in any order.
Valid Parentheses
SolveGiven a string s containing just the characters '(', ')', '{', '}', '[' and ']', determine if the input string is valid.
Container With Most Water
SolveYou are given an integer array height of length n. There are n vertical lines drawn such that the two endpoints of the ith line are (i, 0) and (i, height[i]).
LRU Cache
SolveDesign a data structure that follows the constraints of a Least Recently Used (LRU) cache.
Best Time to Buy and Sell Stock
SolveYou are given an array prices where prices[i] is the price of a given stock on the ith day.
Subarray Sum Equals K
SolveGiven an array of integers nums and an integer k, return the total number of subarrays whose sum equals to k.
Decode the Message
SolveYou are given the strings key and message, which represent a cipher key and a secret message, respectively. The steps to decode message are as follows:
Maximum Number of Balloons
SolveGiven a string text, you want to use the characters of text to form as many instances of the word "balloon" as possible.
3Sum
SolveGiven an integer array nums, return all the triplets [nums[i], nums[j], nums[k]] such that i != j, i != k, and j != k, and nums[i] + nums[j] + nums[k] == 0.
Reverse Nodes in k-Group
SolveGiven the head of a linked list, reverse the nodes of the list k at a time, and return the modified list.
Move Zeroes
SolveGiven an integer array nums, move all 0's to the end of it while maintaining the relative order of the non-zero elements.
Valid Anagram
SolveGiven two strings s and t, return true if t is an anagram of s, and false otherwise.
Maximum Subarray
SolveGiven an integer array nums, find the subarray with the largest sum, and return its sum.
Max Area of Island
SolveYou are given an m x n binary matrix grid. An island is a group of 1's (representing land) connected 4-directionally (horizontal or vertical.) You may assume al...
Reorganize String
SolveGiven a string s, rearrange the characters of s so that any two adjacent characters are not the same.
Largest Perimeter Triangle
SolveGiven an integer array nums, return the largest perimeter of a triangle with a non-zero area, formed from three of these lengths. If it is impossible to form an...
Missing Number
SolveGiven an array nums containing n distinct numbers in the range [0, n], return the only number in the range that is missing from the array.
Longest Palindromic Substring
SolveGiven a string s, return the longest palindromic substring in s.
House Robber
SolveYou are a professional robber planning to rob houses along a street. Each house has a certain amount of money stashed, the only constraint stopping you from rob...
Reverse Linked List
SolveGiven the head of a singly linked list, reverse the list, and return the reversed list.
Is Subsequence
SolveGiven two strings s and t, return true if s is a subsequence of t, or false otherwise.
Group Anagrams
SolveGiven an array of strings strs, group the anagrams together. You can return the answer in any order.
Trapping Rain Water
SolveGiven n non-negative integers representing an elevation map where the width of each bar is 1, compute how much water it can trap after raining.
Construct Binary Tree from Preorder and Inorder Traversal
SolveGiven two integer arrays preorder and inorder where preorder is the preorder traversal of a binary tree and inorder is the inorder traversal of the same tree, c...
Combination Sum II
SolveGiven a collection of candidate numbers (candidates) and a target number (target), find all unique combinations in candidates where the candidate numbers sum to...
First Missing Positive
SolveGiven an unsorted integer array nums. Return the smallest positive integer that is not present in nums.
Simplify Path
SolveYou are given an absolute path for a Unix-style file system, which always begins with a slash '/'. Your task is to transform this absolute path into its simplif...
Flatten Nested List Iterator
SolveYou are given a nested list of integers nestedList. Each element is either an integer or a list whose elements may also be integers or other lists. Implement an...
Course Schedule II
SolveThere are a total of numCourses courses you have to take, labeled from 0 to numCourses - 1. You are given an array prerequisites where prerequisites[i] = [ai, b...
Basic Calculator
SolveGiven a string s representing a valid expression, implement a basic calculator to evaluate it, and return the result of the evaluation.
Find Minimum in Rotated Sorted Array
SolveSuppose an array of length n sorted in ascending order is rotated between 1 and n times. For example, the array nums = [0,1,2,4,5,6,7] might become:
Serialize and Deserialize Binary Tree
SolveSerialization is the process of converting a data structure or object into a sequence of bits so that it can be stored in a file or memory buffer, or transmitte...
Repeated DNA Sequences
SolveThe DNA sequence is composed of a series of nucleotides abbreviated as 'A', 'C', 'G', and 'T'.
Find Winner on a Tic Tac Toe Game
SolveTic-tac-toe is played by two players A and B on a 3 x 3 grid. The rules of Tic-Tac-Toe are:
Frequency scores are based on crowdsourced interview reports. A higher score means the problem has been reported more often in recent Tesla interviews.
Very Likely
75-100%
Likely
50-74%
Sometimes
25-49%
Rare
0-24%
Tesla interviews focus heavily on array, string, hash-table problems. If you're short on time, these are the categories to prioritize. The problems on this page are sorted by frequency, so start from the top and work your way down.
Beyond solving problems, practice explaining your approach. Tesla interviewers care about your thought process - how you break down a problem, consider edge cases, and evaluate tradeoffs between solutions. A clean O(n) solution you can explain clearly beats an O(log n) solution you can't articulate.
Looking for more companies? Browse all 458 companies in our directory, or sharpen your fundamentals with our free data structure visualizers and AI-powered DSA tutor.
Tesla has been reported to ask 43 distinct coding problems. The most common topics are array, string, hash-table. 13 are Easy difficulty, 25 are Medium, and 5 are Hard. Problems are sorted by frequency - the ones at the top are asked most often.
Based on 43 reported problems, Tesla interviews are in line with industry averages - 12% Hard vs 18% overall. 58% of questions are Medium difficulty. Focus on the high-frequency Medium problems first, then work through the Hard ones.
Start with the highest-frequency problems listed on this page. Focus on the core topics: array, string, hash-table. Practice solving them under time pressure and explaining your approach out loud. Mock interviews with AI can simulate the real experience.
Simulate a real Tesla coding interview with an AI interviewer. Get a scorecard with specific feedback on your problem-solving, code quality, and communication.
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