Instart Software Engineer Interview Questions
& Process

The interview process is pretty standard for software engineering roles, and they are quick to schedule and make decisions if you're available and prepared. It starts with a recruiter call where they give an overview of the company and their roadmap, and ask about the roles you're interested in. Then, there's a phone screen, which is usually with an engineer, but in my case, it was with the hiring manager. The next step is the onsite, which consists of five or six 45-minute interviews. Four of these focus on algorithms and coding, one is a system design question, and you also have to describe your current project on a whiteboard, especially if it's relevant to the team's work.

The recruiter contacted me on LinkedIn. The first step was a phone screen, which included a straightforward question. After passing that, I was scheduled for onsite interviews. However, they canceled the onsite interviews the day before, citing a new VP of engineering and organizational changes. They mentioned a hiring freeze. I was hesitant about the team's stability due to their actions and didn't follow up much. A month later, the recruiter reached out again, making persistent calls and messages. I decided to proceed. The onsite interviews went well. They inquired about my salary expectations and promised a response within two days. The recruiter never provided a decision. After I inquired, she sent a generic rejection email 35 days later. I suspect funding issues, explaining the initial hiring pause. I don't recommend interviewing here; it's not worth your time.

I went through a couple of phone interviews. First, there was an exploratory call, which was okay. Then, a technical interview that was pretty disappointing. They asked me to solve a recursive problem that felt pretty useless, and then asked vague questions on cache design. I've designed, implemented, and deployed all sorts of caches throughout my career, and it felt like the interviewer didn't really know much about it. I have about 20 years of experience, developing and deploying large-scale enterprise systems. Asking those 'hacker-earth' style questions feels like a lazy way to do a technical interview.