Want a software job at Google? Bring your AI wingman.
The company is piloting a new interview process for software engineering candidates that will let them use an AI assistant, according to an internal document reviewed by Business Insider.
The change is part of a broader overhaul of Google’s interview process, which the document says is being made “to better align with the modern engineering landscape.”
Google will test the new format, which applies to junior to mid-level roles, to select teams in the US and plans to scale it more widely across the company and regions later if it’s successful.
Starting in the second half of the year, Google will permit the use of an “approved” AI assistant during its “code comprehension” round. Candidates will be expected to “read, debug, and optimize” an existing code database, the document states.
“Interviewers will evaluate Al fluency, including prompt engineering, output validation, and debugging skills,” it adds.
A Google spokesperson confirmed the plans and said its own AI model, Gemini, would be the AI assistant used by candidates during the pilot phase.
“We’re always evolving our interview processes to ensure we’re recruiting and hiring the best talent,” Brian Ong, vice president of recruiting at Google, told Business Insider. “As a part of that, we’re rolling out a pilot for software engineering interviews to be more reflective of how our teams are operating in the AI era.”
The new interview process reflects the significant changes that AI has brought to software developer roles. In late 2025, Anthropic and OpenAI launched new models that dramatically improved the capabilities of coding agents.
Now, three-quarters of new code created inside Google is generated by AI, the company said in April. That same shift is happening elsewhere. Greg Brockman, OpenAI’s president, recently said that AI has gone from writing 20% of code to 80%.
‘Human-led, AI-assisted’
The Google document outlines several other changes the company intends to make to its interview process, which will be piloted first.
The “Googleyness and Leadership” round — which has typically focused on behavioral questions — will now also involve a technical design discussion about a candidate’s past project.
For more junior candidates, one of the technical rounds will be replaced with an interview that will require them to “tackle open-ended engineering challenges,” the document states.
The company will pilot the new formats across several orgs, including Cloud and its platforms and devices unit, this month.
Google’s move follows what some tech startups have been embracing for a while. Graphic design giant Canva and AI coding startup Cognition are among the companies allowing candidates to use AI in technical interviews.
Emily Cohen, who heads people and operations at AI coding company Cognition, told Business Insider last week that it has changed its interview process to incorporate AI use.
“I guess this is like asking a kid to take a math test without a calculator,” she said about not allowing AI use in interviews. “For the bulk of building something similar to what you would do on the role, you can and should use AI tools.”
The document about Google’s new interview process describes it as being “human-led, AI-assisted” and says the format should better simulate a software engineer’s “workflow in the GenAl era.”
Additional reporting from Shubhangi Goel.
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