I applied online. I interviewed at Rakuten (San Mateo, CA)
Interview
It was supposed to be a 5 hour with 5 different individuals.
It was really very bad experience as my interview was stopped in between as I asked more details to understand the technical question been put on board by the first interviewer
This is very bad experience I encountered in my 20 year being in this field.
I felt there is no alignment between team lead who selected me for in person interview and the team mate who interviewed me first during in person.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Some string manipulation which I was trying to understand.
General coding questions and programming, culture fit and hiring manager
Usually there are 3 rounds of interviews starting with technical, culture fit and senior management and then HR round and discussion.
I applied through a recruiter. I interviewed at Rakuten
Interview
Don't go through 3rd party for interview in Rakuten . Rakuten conducts fake interviews. Inspite of doing well, they block your number after final round conducted. Such a waste of time.
I applied through a recruiter. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Rakuten (Tokyo) in Aug 2025
Interview
The first interview will be with a recruiter. In this stage, you will introduce yourself and talk about your professional experience. It mainly focuses on evaluating your English communication skills, cultural fit, and overall background.
The second stage was with another interviewer, but the experience felt unclear. The questions were vague and very general, so I often felt like I was just talking to myself. The lack of engagement made the interview feel monotonous, and I found the interviewer yawning throughout entire session.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
In the second stage, the interviewer asked me questions related to Kafka, RabbitMQ, CQRS, Saga Orchestration, and microservices.
