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Product engineeringProduct company

Kakao

Internet company behind the KakaoTalk messaging app, with businesses in payments, mobility, content, games and banking.

Not known4 stage process documented
Headquarters

South Korea

Headcount

5,000 and up

5,000 or more people
Work model

Not known

Hiring

Not known

Not enough signal to say. Check the careers page directly.
Where to apply

No careers page on file yet. Try their LinkedIn or the job boards below.

Website

Ask for a referral to Kakao

A referral only means something if the person giving it can actually speak to your work. I will refer you where I know someone on the inside and your profile genuinely fits the role, and I will tell you plainly when I cannot. Either way you get an answer, and a straight one.

  • I read every request. A reply takes a few days, sometimes longer.
  • I will not refer someone for a role their profile does not fit. It wastes your time and costs me the contact.
  • Where I cannot refer you, I will say why, and point you at the way in that does work.
  • Nothing you send here is shared with anyone without you agreeing to it first.

If you found the opening, paste it. It tells me which team you mean.

A Drive, Dropbox or personal-site link is fine. Make sure it opens without a request for access, or I cannot read it.

At least a short paragraph. This is what I would be putting my name behind, so specifics beat adjectives.

Comma separated, up to six. Things you would be happy to be tested on.

How they hire

This is the new developer intake, which Kakao has opened to people with up to three years of experience. Stage order is from Kakao’s announcements; what happens inside each interview comes from one candidate.

  1. 1

    First online coding test

    Official +1
    Online testRemote

    Open to anyone who creates an account with basic contact details. No CV, school or age information is asked for at this point.

  2. 2

    Second online coding test

    Official +2
    Online testRemote

    A further online test. One candidate describes it as API-based problem solving rather than classic algorithm puzzles.

  3. 3

    First interview

    Official +1
    Technical interview

    Reported to start with a walk-through of the second coding test, then CS questions, then questions on your written application.

  4. 4

    Second interview

    Official +1
    Culture fit

    Reported to focus on character, communication and how you would work with others.

What comes up

Recurring themes from candidate accounts, not a question bank. Nobody is served by leaked question lists, least of all you in the interview.

  • Ability over credentials

    Official +1

    Kakao has run blind developer hiring since 2017 and says it looks at development ability and job fit rather than education, major, age or gender.

  • Working against an API

    Unverified

    The second test is described as simulation-style work against an API, where pure algorithm specialists often struggle.

  • CS fundamentals

    Unverified

    The candidate stresses that basic computer science knowledge carried the first interview.

Worth reading before you apply

From the Sefism resource library, matched to the rounds above.

Course
Grokking Data Structures & Algorithms for Coding Interviews

A foundations course that builds eleven core data structures from the ground up (arrays, matrices, stacks, queues, linked lists, trees and BSTs, hash tables, hash sets, heaps, graphs and tries), then covers sorting, searching, greedy and divide and conquer. Every chapter has practice problems, flashcards and an assessment. It suits students and career switchers whose foundations came from tutorials and who find pattern courses move too fast.

  • Job search
  • DSA
  • CS fundamentals
Design Gurus · Interview Prep · 4 to 6 weeks · Beginner
SubscriptionDetails
Platform
Design Gurus Problem Set

A browsable practice library of coding problems that can be filtered by pattern, data structure, difficulty and company, so you can drill exactly the weakness you found this week. Patterns include two pointers, sliding window, hash maps, stacks, backtracking and greedy algorithms, with company filters for Google, Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, Oracle and LinkedIn. Free to browse, with an in-browser editor and solutions.

  • Job search
  • DSA
Design Gurus · Interview Prep · Ongoing
FreeDetails
Course
Grokking Tech Salary Negotiations

A practical course on negotiating compensation in tech, from preparing and building a strategy to specific tactics, the full package beyond base salary, handling multiple offers and asking for a raise. It has tailored sections for fresh graduates and experienced engineers. It suits anyone with an offer coming, and anyone who has ever accepted the first number out of discomfort.

  • Career
  • Job search
Design Gurus · Career Growth · 1 week
SubscriptionDetails
Roadmap
Engineering Manager Interview Roadmap

A sequenced path of six text-based courses for the engineering manager interview loop, combining coding, system design, microservices patterns, people management scenarios and senior leadership questions. It suits engineers moving into management and managers changing companies, who need to prepare for both the technical and the leadership rounds without piecing a plan together themselves.

  • Career
  • Leadership
  • Job search
Design Gurus · Career Growth · 2 to 3 months · Advanced
SubscriptionDetails
Community
ICPC (International Collegiate Programming Contest)

The official site of the ICPC, the university programming contest where teams of three share one computer for five hours and advance from regional contests towards the World Finals. It is where coaches register teams, where the current regional and World Finals rules are published, and where you find contests, results and past problems.

  • DSA
  • CS fundamentals
ICPC Foundation · Other · A season of qualifying contests each academic year
FreeDetails
Video
Abdul Bari (YouTube channel)

Abdul Bari's channel is a classic university-style course on the design and analysis of algorithms, taught on a whiteboard in clear English. It covers complexity, divide and conquer, greedy methods, dynamic programming, backtracking, branch and bound, NP-hard problems and string matching, plus Java programming. It suits computer science students studying algorithms as a subject.

  • DSA
  • CS fundamentals
  • Programming
Abdul Bari · Other · Self-paced · Intermediate
FreeDetails
Browse the whole library

What it pays

Nothing collected for this company yet, and nothing worth guessing at. A made-up range is worse than no range because people negotiate against it.

Add to the Kakao page

This library is only as good as what people who have been through it are willing to share. Most of these companies have no hiring process documented anywhere, and one account of what the rounds actually were is worth more than anything I can research from the outside.

What are you adding?

This decides how the claim is labelled on the page. Only someone representing the company can produce an “official” label, and I check that separately.

Year and month.

Comma separated topics, not the questions themselves.

Round by round is ideal: what each one was, how long, remote or in person, and what it covered.

Credit

Anonymous is the default. If you keep it anonymous, nothing identifying you reaches the page: it is published as a candidate account and your name stays with me. Never send anything covered by an NDA, and never send a take-home or a question paper.

Universities they recruit from

No sourced university links yet. A campus drive, a career fair appearance or an internship partnership is what puts a university here.

Add to the Kakao page

This library is only as good as what people who have been through it are willing to share. Most of these companies have no hiring process documented anywhere, and one account of what the rounds actually were is worth more than anything I can research from the outside.

What are you adding?

This decides how the claim is labelled on the page. Only someone representing the company can produce an “official” label, and I check that separately.

Year and month.

Comma separated topics, not the questions themselves.

Round by round is ideal: what each one was, how long, remote or in person, and what it covered.

Credit

Anonymous is the default. If you keep it anonymous, nothing identifying you reaches the page: it is published as a candidate account and your name stays with me. Never send anything covered by an NDA, and never send a take-home or a question paper.

How to actually get seen

The first test needs nothing but an account, so it is a low-cost way in. Practise longer, stateful problems that call an API, not just short algorithm questions.

Sources

Whole profile last checked 2026-09-22.

Interviewed at Kakao? Fill in what changed.

Processes change, rounds get added, tests get replaced. If what you went through was different from what is on this page, tell me and I will update it.

Want me to refer you here?

Send me the role, your CV and a few honest paragraphs on why you fit it. Where I know someone inside and your profile matches, I will make the introduction. Where I cannot, I will tell you why and point you at the route that does work. You get an answer either way.

Ask for a referral to Kakao

A referral only means something if the person giving it can actually speak to your work. I will refer you where I know someone on the inside and your profile genuinely fits the role, and I will tell you plainly when I cannot. Either way you get an answer, and a straight one.

  • I read every request. A reply takes a few days, sometimes longer.
  • I will not refer someone for a role their profile does not fit. It wastes your time and costs me the contact.
  • Where I cannot refer you, I will say why, and point you at the way in that does work.
  • Nothing you send here is shared with anyone without you agreeing to it first.

If you found the opening, paste it. It tells me which team you mean.

A Drive, Dropbox or personal-site link is fine. Make sure it opens without a request for access, or I cannot read it.

At least a short paragraph. This is what I would be putting my name behind, so specifics beat adjectives.

Comma separated, up to six. Things you would be happy to be tested on.

Add to the Kakao page

This library is only as good as what people who have been through it are willing to share. Most of these companies have no hiring process documented anywhere, and one account of what the rounds actually were is worth more than anything I can research from the outside.

What are you adding?

This decides how the claim is labelled on the page. Only someone representing the company can produce an “official” label, and I check that separately.

Year and month.

Comma separated topics, not the questions themselves.

Round by round is ideal: what each one was, how long, remote or in person, and what it covered.

Credit

Anonymous is the default. If you keep it anonymous, nothing identifying you reaches the page: it is published as a candidate account and your name stays with me. Never send anything covered by an NDA, and never send a take-home or a question paper.

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