Deliveroo Interview Questions
& Process

Pros: The TA team was great. Initial screening was well handled, and they kept me updated and sent prep materials. Seeing the office culture and meeting people was good too. Cons: The biggest issue is how long it took. It's a 6-7 stage marathon: screening, business interview, full loop, case study, behavioral, leadership, final, and then a debrief. This felt excessive compared to the industry average of 3-4 stages and became demotivating. The Case Study was frustrating. It wasn't clear the presentation would be a roleplay until it began. I had the data ready, but the delivery was tough because they stayed in character, interrupting every slide and questioning me on specific internal info not in the data pack, stuff you'd only know if you worked there already. Also, one interviewer's body language was unprofessional (yawning, unbothered), making it feel personal and "comedic" rather than a professional skill assessment.

The interview process started with a recruiter call, which went well. After that, I got an online coding test. I feel like these online tests are a way for companies to save effort and make candidates do the work. For experienced people like me, these tests don't really show what you can do or if you're a good fit. They often test how well you can take tests, not how well you build things. This shows they're focused on filling slots fast rather than finding good senior engineers. Good companies spend time talking to you about real problems and how you'd solve them, not just coding puzzles. I want to work somewhere that respects my experience and sees me as a person, not just another number in their hiring process.

So they interview for a level (SDS) and not a specific role on a team. After all 6 interviews I was still not clear on what areas they had jobs available in, which was super frustrating. This meant I couldn't get a feel for the potential work or team environment from talking to the interviewers. The interview process is long but they lay it out clearly: recruiter/HR call, stage 1 technical interview, then a 4 stage loop of SQL, Stakeholder, Presentation, and Case Study. Even though the four stage loop is long, it felt pretty similar to other interviews where those would be combined. I was told repeatedly that the role was about taking a broad problem and developing it into a detailed, clear problem space, but the case study wasn't like that at all. Even though I did great on the other 3 loop interviews, I messed up the case study. I was given a statistical experimentation case study (not a role I was looking for) because they had several roles like that available. Since this was focused on experimentation - not ML as I clearly stated I was interested in - I felt like my time was wasted. Apart from that, the interviews were well detailed beforehand and the interviewers were really nice and their enthusiasm for their roles was obvious. They focused more on communication than technical skill, with the only coding interview being basic SQL (grouping, joining, windows) and no technical questions about machine learning, or dealing with large data.

The process takes a bit, with multiple steps, but they're good about keeping you in the loop after each one. It starts with an HR/recruiter chat. Then, you'll have one or two interviews with managers or team folks. They'll give you a practical task or case study to work on and present. Finally, there's a meeting with someone from another team to see how you'd fit with them and the company culture. All in all, while it takes a while, they communicate well and give you feedback quickly, making it a smooth and professional experience.