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      Senior Software Engineer Interview

      16 Feb 2023
      Anonymous interview candidate
      No offer
      Negative experience
      Average interview

      Application

      I applied online. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Instacart in Jan 2023

      Interview

      Interviewed here in Jan, 2023 for a Senior Software Engineer position. The process was pretty lengthy, first - interview with Karat. Introduction (3-5m), general programming knowledge questions (15m), then a coding challenge that consists of several parts (30m). Very rushed, the interviewer is not an Instacart employee. Next - virtual onsite. 4 interview sessions, can ask to break into 2 days. In no particular order - 2 more coding challenges, system design, bar raiser. Even though they were looking for someone with deep knowledge of Ruby / Rails, none of the interviewers knew Ruby. No Rails deep dive interview either. Maybe unpopular opinion, but having 3 (!!) coding challenge interviews for a senior engineer is a waste of time. If you're a college grad and don't have much of a real world experience - yes, otherwise there's so much more important stuff you can talk to senior engineers about. Next - final round with the hiring manager and direct manager. Expect questions about past projects, processes, conflict resolutions, etc. This is also the time for you to finally ask questions about the company / team / etc. Overall, 6 1-hour long interviews and 2 30m calls with a recruiter. What upset me about interviewing with Instacart is that even after making it through all the rounds and being a great potential fit (almost a decade working with almost identical technology stack, in the same food/grocery delivery industry and using same tooling), they reject you with a standard "not a fit, please monitor our Careers site" email. Asked them to provide more feedback and they never got back to me. Very disrespectful, says a lot about how you'd be treated if you did get an offer. Don't make the same mistake - stay away.

      Interview questions [1]

      Question 1

      Signed NDA. Practice easy/medium leetcode questions with arrays/strings/maps/recursions.
      Answer question
      3

      Other Senior Software Engineer interview reviews for Instacart

      Senior Software Engineer Interview

      18 Mar 2026
      Anonymous interview candidate
      Declined offer
      Negative experience
      Average interview

      Application

      I interviewed at Instacart

      Interview

      I'm sure it's easier to grade applicants with AI, but it'd be nice to have humans involved in the interview process, too. You'll face a couple of AI powered coding challenges. The bigger problems are the ethical implications here after looking into how the company works, with variable pricing based on data on how badly they can screw the consumer with upcharges and how to keep money in their pockets rather than the shoppers & drivers

      Interview questions [1]

      Question 1

      If you could replace your family with AI, would you do it?
      Answer question

      Senior Software Engineer Interview

      16 Mar 2026
      Anonymous interview candidate
      San Francisco, CA
      No offer
      Negative experience
      Difficult interview

      Application

      I applied online. I interviewed at Instacart (San Francisco, CA) in Feb 2026

      Interview

      First there is a codesignal test. This is for 90 minutes and felt frantic. Way too many features/code paths to implement. Then there is the karat llm interview which is 50 minutes. Then a full day of regular interview loop.

      Interview questions [1]

      Question 1

      For CodeSignal it was implementing a cache key store with timestamps. Started with basic setting and getting, then evolved into more advanced code. 4 different parts. Writing a lot of code for this. For the LLM interview you work with a company called Karat. You are giving an VS code like workspace and an ai to help. You have 50 minutes. They then dump a large project in your space. For me it was a bus route simulator. I was then asked to implement a feature : Have the system prioritize Priority Pass people. I used the LLM to track down the code and implement it, but it was difficult to test in code that is unknown to me. The next feature was implementing wheelchairs for the bus which requires special capacity checks.
      Answer question
      1

      Senior Software Engineer Interview

      8 Apr 2025
      Anonymous interview candidate
      Toronto, ON
      No offer
      Negative experience
      Average interview

      Application

      I applied online. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Instacart (Toronto, ON) in Feb 2025

      Interview

      1. Online OA with codesignal to start with. Very standard and not hard 2. Got the 4 interview rounds and you can always divide into 2 parts of 2 interviews each. It was be 2 codesignals with medium difficulty and I managed to do both. One system design which was average for me and interviewer was okay as well. Behavioural round was standard. No wonder why I didn't manage to get the offer.
      3

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