Instacart Data Engineer Interview Questions
& Process

First, there was a call with a technical recruiter to go over the role and pay. Then, a technical assessment with an advanced SQL and advanced Python question. Finally, a data modeling interview focused on marketplace experience, which had two steps.

So, first I talked to the hiring manager, then they sent me a data engineering challenge. This challenge had two parts: data modeling and programming. For the data modeling, I had to create a designed schema with facts, dimensions, and relationships, and also write descriptions for the tables and columns, plus DDLS and SQLs to calculate metrics. For the programming part, I had to write a Python script and include input/output files and two wrappers to run it on both Linux and Windows. A few days later, I got an email saying they were going with other candidates. It's been over a year, and I just found out they've permanently banned me from hiring, which is super weird for just a take-home challenge.

So, first there was a phone screen with a technical recruiter, which was fine. Then, a technical screen with the hiring manager, also fine. The final part was a 4-hour panel interview with people from data engineering, data science, product, and the director of infrastructure who was a bar raiser. Honestly, the panel interviews were a total flop. The interviewers seemed checked out and not really engaged. There was barely any time to ask about the job, the team, or the company. Most questions were super specific to Instacart's way of doing things and not really analytics engineering, like designing an ad reporting system, coding old-school ETL, or explaining a system I built to someone who didn't use the same tech.