Instacart Data Scientist Interview Questions
Master your tech interview with our curated database of real questions from top companies.
Calculate Weekly Revenue and Order Count for Standard Deliveries
instacart_orders +----------+---------+---------+------------+---------+--------------+ | order_id | user_id | revenue | created_at | geo | delive...
Measure Ultrafast Delivery's Impact Using Synthetic Control Method
Scenario Instacart launched Ultrafast Delivery in Miami two months ago and wants to measure its causal impact on user order volume. Assume you have pa...
Investigate Instacart Revenue Decline Using Weekly Data
Scenario You are the on-call Data Scientist for Instacart. This week’s total revenue is down 4% versus the prior week. Initially, you only have access...
Describe cross-functional collaboration under time pressure
Tell me about a time you led a cross-functional initiative with ambiguous requirements and severe time pressure. The interviewer asked generic or shif...
Recommend and validate a budget allocation strategy
Using insights you would derive from the SQL task (top advertiser by total spend; most profitable program by net profit and by margin), propose a conc...
Write SQL to rank advertisers and profitability
You are given two denormalized tables. Use ANSI SQL (CTEs allowed) and UNPIVOT (or an equivalent UNION ALL approach if UNPIVOT is unavailable). Table:...
Aggregate weekly revenue and attribute 4% drop
Write SQL over the following schema to: (A) compute weekly revenue by ISO week (Monday–Sunday) from orders, excluding cancelled/refunded; revenue_usd ...
Evaluate Miami Ultrafast impact on orders
Instacart launched an Ultrafast delivery feature in Miami two months ago. You have weekly orders per geo for the past 52 weeks; Miami is treated from ...
Diagnose 4% weekly revenue drop using history
You only have a single table weekly_revenue(week_start_date DATE, revenue_usd NUMERIC) containing the last 104 weeks for Instacart. A DS reports that ...
Diagnose Sunday Miami same‑day outages
Marketplace stability case: same‑day disablement on Sunday afternoons (Miami) Context Instacart offers two fulfillment modes: - Same‑day delivery (rea...
Contrast Lasso vs Ridge trade‑offs
Regularization choices for modeling contribution per order (p=50) Context: You are building a linear model for contribution per order (continuous outc...
Improve low R² without p‑hacking
Predicting Contribution per Order with Low R² Context You are modeling contribution per order (a continuous per-order outcome such as margin or profit...
Use regression vs cohorts for A/B estimation
Regression-adjusted estimation of treatment effects for contribution per order Context You are analyzing an A/B test at the order level. The outcome i...
Compute duration and stopping rules correctly
Experiment Runtime Planning: Same‑Day Delivery Attach Rate You are planning an A/B test on the same‑day delivery attach rate (the proportion of eligib...
Choose tests under non‑normal, unequal variance
Heavy-Tailed, Heteroskedastic Metrics in A/B Tests (AOV example) Context: You are comparing two groups in an A/B test on a spend metric (e.g., Average...
Analyze A/B test with revenue–cost tradeoffs
A/B Test: Same‑Day Delivery Checkout Change You are evaluating a checkout UI change that promotes same‑day delivery. The experiment is a standard two‑...
Describe cross-team collaboration approach
Cross-Functional Collaboration, Cadence, Artifacts, and Conflict Resolution Context: You are interviewing for a Data Scientist role in a consumer mark...
Solve a challenge using data
Behavioral Prompt: High-Stakes Data Decision You Led You are interviewing for a Data Scientist role and are asked to demonstrate business impact throu...
Explain handling very large datasets
Describe a project where you ingested and processed a dataset of at least 500 million rows or 1 TB end-to-end. Detail storage formats and partitioning...
Summarize your background concisely
Behavioral Prompt: 60–90 Second Career Walkthrough (Data Scientist, HR Screen) Context You are interviewing for a Data Scientist role in a consumer-te...