Software Engineer applicants have rated the interview process at Instacart with 3.1 out of 5 (where 5 is the highest level of difficulty) and assessed their interview experience as 27% positive. To compare, the company-average is 46% positive. This is according to Glassdoor user ratings.
Candidates applying for Software Engineer roles take an average of 18 days to get hired, when considering 22 user submitted interviews for this role. To compare, the hiring process at Instacart overall takes an average of 16 days.
Common stages of the interview process at Instacart as a Software Engineer according to 22 Glassdoor interviews include:
Phone interview: 46%
One on one interview: 18%
Skills test: 14%
Group panel interview: 7%
Background check: 4%
Drug test: 4%
Presentation: 4%
Personality test: 4%
Here are the most commonly searched roles for interview reports -
I applied online. The process took 2 months. I interviewed at Instacart (Toronto, ON) in Jan 2024
Interview
- Was reached out to by a recruiter after applying to one of their roles in Toronto.
- Was given an online assessment, passed it.
- Was booked for a short meeting to discuss the onsite interviews with a recruiter.
- There are 4 onsite interviews.
- Behavioural Interview (A bunch of questions you can find in other reviews. The usual questions for L3/L4)
- Systems Design (Asked to design a product catalog. Interviewer was cold and did not want to be there. I had to essentially beg for him to give 1 word answers to my questions. Slack was going off)
- Data pivoting (Shifting some data around, pretty easy. Interviewer was also not paying attention and his Slack messages were going off.)
- DSA (Also easy, but the interviewer didn't understand my solution even though I tried explaining it to him multiple times. I need to get better at explaining my thought process but I think he was fishing for a reason to reject me. Passed all test cases. Asked me if I would bet $10,000 that my solution would pass an additional 10,000 test cases. I said no, so maybe that's why I didn't pass? Next time say yes I guess lol)
Result: Rejection with no feedback.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
- Systems Design (Asked to design a product catalog. Interviewer was cold and did not want to be there. I had to essentially beg for him to give 1 word answers to my questions. Slack was going off)
I applied online. I interviewed at Instacart (Toronto, ON)
Interview
I had a couple of interview rounds with Instacart. Overall, I think it went pretty well, except for one round that didn’t feel as strong. I asked for feedback afterward, but unfortunately they didn’t share any. The system design and algorithm questions were manageable, especially if you’re familiar with LeetCode-style problems. One thing I really appreciated is that they clearly explain what to expect in each interview round ahead of time, which helps a lot with preparation.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
One of the rounds was behavioral — they asked questions based on my resume and also about how I work and behave in a team environment.
Four long rounds and ghosted after the interview, even though all technical assessments went well. Tedious process but they do give you a gift card as a compensation for your time and effort.
I applied online. I interviewed at Instacart (Toronto, ON) in Jul 2025
Interview
2 rounds of 60 min coding sessions, a 1hr break after that, 45 min behavioural round, and then an easy system design round for 60 mins. Questions were pretty straight forward and easy. Second coding round has data structures involved, first one is just parsing thru dictionaries. Could not finish the second part of the second coding round. Behavioural interviewer has a dull personality and sort of killed the vibe. Otherwise I did really well on every round but still didn’t get the offer. Looking at Reddit, seems like many people had the same experience and were surprised to not get the offer so I don’t know if it’s worth your time interviewing here.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
[coding round 2]: you have one shopper and multiple orders of varying start times and durations. Calculate the average wait times.