Instacart Interview Questions
& Process
Real candidates share what happened, how many rounds they had,
and how the experience turned out.
Based on 564 interview experiences · FREE TO READ
Which role are you interviewing for?
30 roles · 564 reportsCandidate interview experiences
First-hand accounts from people who interviewed at Instacart.
Instacart
Software Developer in Test
Mid Difficult Negative experience No offer 2 rounds
Interview process
Technical screen Take home Onsite
Interview formats
Coding Technical Behavioral
It was a really unprofessional hiring process. They canceled the role after I'd already gone through several technical rounds. I applied for the Software Developer in Test II position and they put me through a tough, multi-step interview. First, there was a CodeSignal test that took a lot of time. Then, I had an interview that combined coding, automation, and a chat with the hiring manager. I spent a lot of time getting ready and doing these interviews. After I passed all of them, I just got a generic email saying the role was canceled because 'priorities have shifted'. It's really disrespectful to candidates to make them do hours of technical assessments when the company hasn't even confirmed the headcount or sorted out their internal plans. It shows they're not well-planned and their internal operations are messy. Software Developers should be careful about interviewing here because they might just cancel the position right at the end.
Confirmed questions2 questions
- CodeSignal assessment (medium-hard difficulty).
- Interview with Manager including: 1 simple live coding task, automation for Login Page, and follow-up questions (totaling 1.5 hours).
Instacart
Software Engineer
Mid Average Positive experience No offer 2 rounds
Interview process
Recruiter call Technical screen Onsite
Interview formats
Behavioral Technical System Design Coding
I went through a couple of interview rounds with Instacart. Honestly, I think it went pretty well overall, though there was one round that didn't feel as strong. I did ask for feedback afterwards, but they didn't end up sharing any. The system design and algorithm questions were pretty manageable, especially if you've done LeetCode problems before. A big plus was that they gave a heads-up on what to expect in each round, which really helped me prepare.
Confirmed questions3 questions
- Questions were asked about my resume and how I work and behave within a team.
- How do you approach system design problems?
- Can you solve this algorithm problem?
Instacart
Senior Designer
Senior Difficult Negative experience No offer 3 rounds
Interview process
Recruiter call Technical screen Onsite
Interview formats
Case Presentation Behavioral
The interview process for this Senior Designer role was overly complicated and felt tedious, especially considering the less-than-ideal compensation package (low base salary, no bonus, and poor equity). They also included a poorly executed test. It's a bit concerning that this position is open because the company recently laid off a significant portion of the team and is now hiring for the same roles. Instacart also has a pretty bad reputation in my area, though the people I met seemed to think they were on par with FAANG companies. Honestly, I think these long interview processes are a waste of everyone's time and don't necessarily identify the best performers.
Confirmed questions1 question
- They asked me to provide free consulting as part of the potential employment opportunity.
Instacart
Senior Manager
Senior Average Neutral experience No offer 5 rounds
Interview process
Recruiter call Phone screen Technical screen
Interview formats
Behavioral Technical
Got recommended for the role by someone working there, but it took about a month to hear back. The recruiter screener call went pretty well, it was scheduled for 30 minutes but ended up going for an hour. The recruiter even said I was moving on before we hung up. Had the hiring manager interview the same week, also 30 minutes. They were a couple minutes late to the Google meet, and just kind of dove right in. It seemed like they were reading questions off a script, and while they gave me positive feedback, they didn't ask for more detail or examples from my past work. Instead of specific examples, they asked broad hypothetical questions about strategy and management. They skipped a few questions because they felt I'd already answered them, and left only about 7 minutes for my questions. It felt a bit rough, and I couldn't get them to react much. I figured I'd get rejected, and heard back the next day. If I had passed, I was told there would be 4-6 interviews in total, with the next round being interviews with the 'pillars', though neither the recruiter nor the hiring manager could really explain who they were. The interview itself wasn't super hard, but the interviewer didn't seem like a natural at interviewing.
Confirmed questions2 questions
- Regarding prioritization and handling unexpected workload changes, how do you manage your objectives?
- How do you prioritize objectives and deal with unexpected changes to your workload?
Instacart Interview Questions
Quoted word for word from Instacart interview reports.
“Implement functionality to retrieve a value at a specific timestamp using a key and timestamp.”
Read reports →“Is it acceptable to use retention rates as a measure of user satisfaction?”
Read reports →“For an A/B test analysis on the thanksgiving-coupon experiment, where users are either in the incentive group (getting $10 off) or non-incentive group, and the coupon expires on 11/29/2020 PST, how would you analyze the results? You have access to the Experiments table (user_id, experiment, group_ind, assigned_at_utc) and the Orders table (user_id, order_id, order_created_timestamp_utc, order_amount_usd), and you can convert UTC timestamps to PST. You also have the Coupon_spend table (user_id, order_id) for tracking redeemed coupons.”
Read reports →“Can you explain how to read from a file where the first line has coordinates and subsequent lines have letters, and the task is to reach a target (x, y) starting from the bottom left (last line)?”
Read reports →“What metrics would you use to evaluate the performance of marketing campaigns across different channels?”
Read report →“Given a dataset containing multiple vendors and their transactions, please identify key trends and formulate a recommendation.”
Read report →“Do you like shopping and know how to find food substitutes for allergies?”
Read report →“What do you identify as a potential accounting risk given the company's business model?”
Read report →“Could you build the grocery challenge screen for one of the questions you get from their API? It should include one "Question" JSON object with 4 images, and then indicate if the selected image is the correct answer.”
Read report →Formats, difficulty and experience
Across all 564 Instacart interview reports.