Zulily Software Engineer Interview Questions
& Process
Real candidates share what happened, how many rounds they had,
and how the experience turned out.
Based on 42 interview experiences · FREE TO READ
Candidate interview experiences
First-hand accounts from people who interviewed at Zulily.
Zulily
Software Engineer
Entry Average Positive experience No offer 5 rounds
Interview process
Recruiter call Technical screen Onsite
Interview formats
Technical Coding Behavioral
Started with a phone screen with the tech recruiter who was helpful. Then, I had a Coderpad technical interview that was scheduled fast. The question was reasonable for an hour but challenging. Within hours, I was invited for an onsite at Seattle HQ the next week. The onsite had five rounds, including a lunch break with the manager. Most questions were standard algorithms and data structures, typical for a junior SE. Interviewers were respectful and answered my questions. Some interviewers seemed a bit inexperienced and intervened too early while I was solving problems. I felt like I was guided through one problem, which was concerning. The last question was complex due to its scope for a one-hour slot, and I think more guidance would have been helpful. Overall a positive experience, and I'd recommend interviewing with Zulily.
Confirmed questions4 questions
- Several MySQL queries or trivia questions were asked.
- A dynamic programming question related to binary trees was presented.
- Questions on string manipulation were included.
Zulily
Software Engineer
Mid Difficult Positive experience No offer 4 rounds
Interview process
Recruiter call Phone screen Technical screen Onsite
Interview formats
Behavioral Technical Coding
A Zulily technical recruiter reached out via email after finding my resume in their database. We had a quick call to chat about my background, web dev experience, the role's responsibilities, and Zulily's general operations. Then, I had a technical phone interview for about an hour with an engineer. I thought I'd be coding, but after we talked more about my past work and projects, they decided against it. Soon after, I was invited to their office for a 5-hour interview block with 6 team members. It started with an hour with an engineer, followed immediately by an hour with a project manager. The initial engineer interview didn't go great; I'm better at short bursts than long hauls, and after a rocky start on the whiteboard challenge, I couldn't recover. The question itself wasn't super hard, but my limited technical interview experience made me freeze up. I'm not sure how the rest of the interviews would have gone, but the recruiter ended my interview at lunch since the first two interviewers already felt I wasn't a fit, which saved me 3 hours. Nobody was impolite, but the first engineer was often looking at his phone, making it feel like my whiteboard work was for no one and my explanations didn't matter. Free parking made giving Zulily a shot cost-effective, and I hope to reapply in the future.
Confirmed questions2 questions
- Can you explain how you would build a product from the beginning to the end?
- Explain how you'd build a product from start to finish.
Zulily
Senior Software Engineer
Senior Average Negative experience No offer 2 rounds
Interview process
Phone screen Onsite
Interview formats
Behavioral
It was a pretty standard interview process: first a phone screen and then an onsite. The onsite had 4 pairs of interviewers and we took a break for lunch. They mostly asked about my experience, their roles, and some behavioral questions. Overall it was a good experience, but the initial phone screen person was late, and they didn't seem to have much cloud infrastructure experience for the role. Didn't get an offer in the end...
Confirmed questions1 question
- How do you handle competing, high-priority tasks from various teams?
Zulily Software Engineer Interview Questions
Quoted word for word from Zulily interview reports.
“Find words and their anagrams within a 2D matrix.”
Read reports →“Find the top, left, and right views of a binary tree.”
Read reports →“Can you print all upper and lower case variations of a given string?”
Read reports →“What are the top K frequent elements in a list?”
Read reports →“Given a grid of lights, initially on ('Y') or off ('N'), and a number of switch flips M, determine the maximum number of rows that can be entirely lit ('Y') after exactly M flips, where flipping a switch reverses all lights in that column.”
Read report →“Can you reverse a sentence but not the words within it?”
Read report →“Can you write a function that takes a file as input, checks it, and removes duplicate words?”
Read report →“How would you search for a number in a rotated sorted array?”
Read report →“How would you search for a word within a 2D matrix?”
Read report →Formats, difficulty and experience
Across all 42 Zulily interview reports.