Senior Software Engineer applicants have rated the interview process at Wayfair with 2.9 out of 5 (where 5 is the highest level of difficulty) and assessed their interview experience as 28% positive. To compare, the company-average is 51.5% positive. This is according to Glassdoor user ratings.
Candidates applying for Senior Software Engineer roles take an average of 17 days to get hired, when considering 67 user submitted interviews for this role. To compare, the hiring process at Wayfair overall takes an average of 22 days.
Common stages of the interview process at Wayfair as a Senior Software Engineer according to 67 Glassdoor interviews include:
Phone interview: 32%
One on one interview: 22%
Group panel interview: 13%
Presentation: 12%
Skills test: 11%
IQ intelligence test: 4%
Personality test: 3%
Background check: 2%
Drug test: 2%
Here are the most commonly searched roles for interview reports -
I applied online. The process took 1+ week. I interviewed at Wayfair (Boston, MA) in May 2019
Interview
This starts with a recruiter contacting you (typically based on an application). Recruiters are very nice to talk to and explain the entire process nicely and are very enthusiastic and detail oriented. After this initial discussion, they would arrange for 1 hour interview on coderpad for technical round - typically on SQL and Java (or any language of choice). Wayfair uses C# and PHP, but they are language agnostic during interview process.
After the technical screening, they would invite for roughly 6 hours of onsite interview on a Monday (the interview day). This involves 30 mins with recruiter in the beginning and also at the end. And 4 sessions of 1 hour each (and thankfully they sprinkle in a lunch break with a colleague for additional QnA).
In these 4 sessions, one of them is with a manager who has many behavioral questions, project experience (essentially walking thru the resume).
During the system design phase, 2 engineers would ask to design a system e.g. how to setup a tinyURL site, or twitter like site, but usually a simpler problem. And they would build upon that requirement during this 1 hour session.
Another round is for database design where 2 engineers would ask to design a database (with ER diagram) and then test the SQL skills. Again, trying to add more complexity as they go along.
In Final technical round, 2 engineers would go back to Coderpad to solve a coding assignment. Usually a simple question, and they would prefer end to end compilation and testing. They would like to see you talk thru the design and implementation approach.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
1. How to encrypt a set of string e.g. WAAAYYFFFFFAIIIRR to W1A3Y2F4A1I3R2 etc... And how to decrypt it back to original string (2 separate functions)
2. How to design a system so that user can check in their location thru their phone, and how to scale it when the app gets popular and millions of users are using it. How would you expand the application features when popularity grows.
3. How to design a database of Warehouse, Suppliers and Customers and they ask you to write various SQL queries to pull products sold, how many customers bought more than 30 products etc
4. A coding problem to simulate the coin game and gambler's fallacy (if they are 4 Heads in a row, gambler would bet on Tail, and vice versa).
HR reached out and scheduled the discussion - discussed the details of the position.
One Online assignment
Scheduled one DSA round. - medium leetcode
System design round discussion - where we discussed the details of the different component of the system
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
They always ask the same question from each of the candidates.
I applied online. I interviewed at Wayfair (Toronto, ON) in Aug 2025
Interview
Overall ok but the coding test environment is like a black box that you just can’t debug. If you solve by debugging, you’re doomed. LeetCode won’t really prepare you for this.
I applied online. The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Wayfair (Bengaluru) in Apr 2025
Interview
The 1st round was Coding round on Hacker rank, the question was to validate if given set of IP address or not.
The second question was on Task scheduling which was based on hashmap.