Rakuten Software Engineer Interview Questions
& Process
Real candidates share what happened, how many rounds they had,
and how the experience turned out.
Based on 407 interview experiences · FREE TO READ
Candidate interview experiences
First-hand accounts from people who interviewed at Rakuten.
Rakuten
Software Engineer
Mid Average Negative experience No offer 2 rounds
Interview process
Recruiter call Technical screen Background check Offer
Interview formats
Behavioral Technical
It was a pretty bad experience overall. I had two interviewers, neither of whom were HR. One was easy to talk to, but the other struggled with English, making it hard for them to communicate, to the point I considered switching to Japanese even though that's supposedly the company's internal language. They didn't understand some of my questions even after I rephrased and gave examples. They mostly asked generic behavioral questions they were clearly reading from a script, like 'What inspires you?', 'What makes you happy?', 'What are your ambitions?', and 'What tech do you want to learn?'. Only one question seemed potentially related to my CV, but it might have been a coincidence. They barely discussed their team or the product. I ended up asking them more questions than they asked me, which might be why I didn't move forward. Then they ghosted me, which is the opposite of how it should be. They didn't even send a rejection, even after I followed up, which makes me question how they treat their employees.
Confirmed questions6 questions
- Can you share an example of how you approached performance optimization in your past role?
- What is it that motivates you in your professional life?
- Describe a situation where you had to overcome a specific challenge at work, using the STAR method.
Rakuten
Software Engineer
Entry Difficult Positive experience No offer 3 rounds
Interview process
Technical screen Technical screen Technical screen
Interview formats
Technical Coding Behavioral Technical
So there were three rounds of interviews in total. The first two were technical, and the third was a mix of technical and managerial. Round 1 had an intro, two medium-hard DSA questions focused on Trees, and some questions on Solid Principles. Round 2 involved two easy-to-medium DSA questions, and then we dove into implementing a Decorator, ASYNC, Multithreading, and a Singleton class, plus some deep dives into my project experience. The final round was with the director, and it kicked off with 'Why do you want to leave your current job?' followed by one tricky DSA question. I think I got dinged in the third round mainly because of the behavioral questions; I was pretty nervous, honestly.
Confirmed questions8 questions
- Questions about Trees - specifically the right view, design concepts, and Binary Search.
- Could you solve two DSA questions of medium-hard difficulty, focusing on Trees?
- Could you solve two DSA questions of easy-to-medium difficulty?
Rakuten
Senior Software Engineer
Senior Average Negative experience No offer 2 rounds
Interview process
Recruiter call Technical screen
Interview formats
Coding Behavioral
It started with a chat with the Hiring Manager which was great, got a good vibe about the team and role. But then the second round (technical) was a letdown. It was split into 30 mins coding and 30 mins Q&A. The interviewer was really dismissive and stuck to his guns, calling my approach 'useless' without any real technical backing. It felt unprofessional and disrespectful, especially when they're supposed to be looking at how you solve problems and work with others, not just if you know the 'right' way. To top it off, he was new to Rakuten, which made his attitude even more out of place. We need some constructive talk and respect to figure things out, and that was missing. The first part was good, but the second round made me question the team's culture.
Confirmed questions2 questions
- Can you describe your experience with Leetcode, specifically the snake game problem?
- What are some of the key projects or accomplishments from your time at your current company?
Rakuten Software Engineer Interview Questions
Quoted word for word from Rakuten interview reports.
“Find all the pairs of numbers within an array that add up to a specific target sum.”
Read reports →“How do you find the count of 0s and 1s within an array?”
Read reports →“What's the distinction between the 'throw' and 'throws' keywords in Java? Also, what happens if both a catch block and a finally block throw an exception – which exception is ultimately thrown by the function?”
Read reports →“Given an array, how would you find the minimum distance between any two duplicate elements?”
Read reports →“How would you find a missing number from an array of 1 to n in O(log n) time?”
Read report →“Can you write some Java code to have one thread print even numbers and another thread print odd numbers, making sure it's synchronized?”
Read report →“Given an array showing stock prices for consecutive days, create a function that tells us on which day to buy and on which day to sell to make the most profit.”
Read report →“How can JUnit be utilized for testing endpoints in a Spring Boot application? Also, what is Mockito used for?”
Read report →“Write code that handles input: if it's just a number, print "number"; if it's numbers and letters, throw a custom "AlphaNumericException"; if it's just letters, throw a custom "StringException".”
Read report →Formats, difficulty and experience
Across all 407 Rakuten interview reports.