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Group Anagrams at Netflix — Interview Guide

How to approach Group Anagrams in a Netflix interview: the optimal approach, what Netflix interviewers look for, and company-specific tips.

Updated 2026-09MediumArrays & Hashing

The problem at Netflix

Given an array of strings, group the anagrams together. An anagram group contains strings that are rearrangements of the same letters.

Netflix uses this problem to assess senior, autonomous, culture-first. Expect Netflix-specific follow-ups that tie the solution back to production reasoning and the company's engineering bar.

Key concepts

Sorting each string gives a canonical key — O(k log k) per string.
A 26-character count tuple is a key in O(k) per string and is faster for long strings.
Both produce the same groups; the count key wins when strings are long.

Approach

import collections
def group_anagrams(strs):
    groups = collections.defaultdict(list)
    for s in strs:
        key = [0] * 26
        for c in s:
            key[ord(c) - 97] += 1
        groups[tuple(key)].append(s)
    return list(groups.values())

What Netflix looks for

Senior-level autonomy — you operate without hand-holding.
Judgment and context-sharing over rules.
High performance and candor.
Alignment with the culture deck (freedom & responsibility).

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