Adobe Coding Interview Questions
26 Adobe coding interview problems with full optimal solutions — 15 easy, 8 medium, 3 hard. Every problem ships with multiple approaches (brute-force first, then the optimal), complexity tables for each, company-specific tips on what an Adobe interviewer values, and a FAQ section.
- #1easyfrequently asked
1. Two Sum
Given an array of integers and a target, return indices of the two numbers that add up to the target. Adobe phone screens use this as the warm-up that decides whether you understand the array-to-hashmap conversion that powers nearly every duplicate/lookup task in image-processing pipelines.
- #2easyfrequently asked
2. Valid Parentheses
Given a string of brackets, determine whether every opener has a matching closer in the right order. Adobe uses this to grade whether you reach for a stack reflexively — the same data structure that powers SVG path tag balancing and undo/redo state.
- #3easyfrequently asked
3. Merge Two Sorted Lists
Merge two sorted singly-linked lists into one sorted list, reusing the existing nodes. Adobe uses this as the pointer-manipulation litmus test — the same merge logic underlies layer compositing where two ordered Z-stacks combine into one.
- #4easyfrequently asked
4. Remove Duplicates from Sorted Array
Given a sorted array, remove duplicates in-place and return the new length. Adobe tests this because in-place mutation on large pixel/sample arrays is a hot path — every byte allocated is a frame dropped.
- #5easysometimes asked
5. Remove Element
Given an array and a value, remove every occurrence in-place and return the new length. Adobe asks this to test in-place mutation discipline that maps directly to pixel-mask filtering in image-editor pipelines.
- #6easyfrequently asked
6. Search Insert Position
Given a sorted array and a target, return the index where the target would be inserted to keep the array sorted. Adobe uses this to test whether you can write boundary-correct binary search — the same primitive used in z-order insertion of layers.
- #7easysometimes asked
7. Plus One
Given a non-empty array of digits representing a non-negative integer, increment it by one. Adobe uses this to test carry-propagation logic — the same pattern that drives big-integer arithmetic in PDF page-number generation and version counters.
- #8easyfrequently asked
8. Merge Sorted Array
Merge two sorted arrays where the first has trailing space to hold the merged result. Adobe asks this to test whether you'll spot the right-to-left trick that avoids overwriting unread data — a pattern that appears in scanline buffer compositing.
- #9easyfrequently asked
9. Binary Tree Inorder Traversal
Return the inorder traversal of a binary tree's node values. Adobe asks this to confirm you can convert between recursive and iterative tree traversals — the same flexibility you need when traversing nested SVG groups or PSD layer trees.
- #10easysometimes asked
10. Same Tree
Given two binary trees, decide if they are structurally identical and have the same node values. Adobe uses this to test whether you can write clean structural recursion — the foundation for diffing two versions of a document tree in collaborative editing.
- #11easysometimes asked
11. Symmetric Tree
Determine whether a binary tree is a mirror of itself. Adobe asks this to test mirror-recursion intuition — the same logic that flips paths and shapes across the vertical axis in vector graphics editors.
- #12easyfrequently asked
12. Maximum Depth of Binary Tree
Given the root of a binary tree, return its maximum depth. Adobe uses this to validate recursive thinking that directly mirrors how document tree structures and layer hierarchies are traversed in creative applications.
- #13easyfrequently asked
13. Path Sum
Determine if a binary tree has a root-to-leaf path whose node values sum to a given target. Adobe uses this to test recursive DFS reasoning and the candidate's ability to propagate state down a tree — skills central to traversing document and scene graph hierarchies.
- #14easysometimes asked
14. Pascal's Triangle
Generate the first numRows rows of Pascal's triangle as a list of lists. Adobe uses this to assess 2D array construction skills and the candidate's ability to build each row from the previous one — a pattern that mirrors incremental rendering pipelines.
- #15easyfrequently asked
15. Best Time to Buy and Sell Stock
Given an array of stock prices, find the maximum profit from one buy-sell transaction. Adobe uses this to test single-pass sliding window thinking and the candidate's ability to track a running minimum — skills applicable to range normalization and histogram equalization in image processing.
- #16mediumfrequently asked
16. Rotate Image
Rotate an n×n matrix 90 degrees clockwise in-place. Adobe is a graphics and imaging company — in-place 2D array transformations are a core competency that appears directly in image rotation, canvas transforms, and pixel buffer manipulation across Photoshop, Lightroom, and Illustrator.
- #17mediumfrequently asked
17. Spiral Matrix
Return all elements of an m×n matrix in spiral order. Adobe's heavy focus on 2D array manipulation and image-buffer traversal makes this a recurring interview problem — spiral traversal is a canonical test of boundary-shrinking logic for pixel scan patterns.
- #18mediumsometimes asked
18. Jump Game
Given an array where each element is the maximum jump length from that position, determine if you can reach the last index from index 0. Adobe uses this to test greedy reasoning and forward-reachability tracking — a pattern that appears in animation timeline reachability and workflow-state feasibility checks.
- #19mediumfrequently asked
19. Merge Intervals
Given a collection of intervals, merge all overlapping intervals. Adobe uses interval merging extensively in creative applications — timeline editing in Premiere Pro, selection ranges in Photoshop, and layer time spans all require efficient overlap detection and merging.
- #20mediumsometimes asked
20. Unique Paths
Count the number of unique paths in an m×n grid from the top-left to the bottom-right moving only right or down. Adobe uses this to assess dynamic programming fluency and the candidate's ability to reduce a combinatorial problem to a grid DP — skills that transfer to rendering pipeline optimization and layout engine design.
- #21mediumfrequently asked
21. Word Search
Determine if a word exists in an m×n character grid where letters must be adjacent horizontally or vertically. Adobe uses this as a signature 2D DFS/backtracking problem — the grid-search pattern is directly applicable to font glyph shape recognition, texture atlas lookups, and region-growing algorithms in image segmentation.
- #22mediumsometimes asked
22. Decode Ways
Count the number of ways to decode a numeric string where '1'-'26' map to 'A'-'Z'. Adobe tests this problem to assess DP string-parsing skills and careful handling of edge cases like leading zeros — patterns central to font encoding, barcode parsing, and document format decoding in Creative Cloud.
- #23mediumfrequently asked
23. Validate Binary Search Tree
Determine if a binary tree is a valid BST. Adobe asks this to test whether candidates understand the global invariant (not just local parent-child comparisons) — a level of rigor that mirrors validating hierarchical constraint systems in document structure and layout engines.
- #24hardfrequently asked
24. Trapping Rain Water
Given an elevation map, compute how much water it can trap after raining. Adobe uses this hard problem to test whether candidates can derive the two-pointer O(n) insight from first principles — the same "what constrains this position" reasoning appears in histogram-based image segmentation and raster-scan compression.
- #25hardfrequently asked
25. Largest Rectangle in Histogram
Find the area of the largest rectangle that can be formed within a histogram. Adobe uses this hard stack problem in onsite rounds because the monotonic-stack pattern for span/extent calculations appears directly in raster image run-length encoding, histogram equalization, and canvas selection-area optimization.
- #26hardsometimes asked
26. Maximal Rectangle
Find the largest rectangle containing only 1s in a binary matrix. Adobe uses this as a synthesis problem that combines 2D array traversal with the histogram stack algorithm — directly applicable to bounding-box detection in image segmentation and selection-region optimization in Photoshop.
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