Interview Experiences

Real candidates, real loops: every round, what was asked, and how it ended.

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59 stories

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DoorDashSoftware Engineer
Oct 2026

Food Review System Design That Was All DB Schema, Then a Debug Round, Rejected

I was rejected a few weeks ago, so I'm posting this now. The phone screen was nothing special, the classic payment question, and the interviewer was very helpful. Onsite: Hiring manager round. Nothing much, it's basically just BQ, and they all came out about the same. System design, the classic food review. The interviewer barely discussed anything with me the whole time. Basically I was the one…

RejectedOnsite0
DoorDashSoftware Engineer
Oct 2026

Dasher Pay Phone Screen with a Surprise Sweep Line and Peak Windows Follow-up

This was the dasher pay question from the interview reports on the forum. I spent a good chunk of time up front discussing the requirements and the data shape. I wanted to get part 1 done with a simple algorithm first and worry about the rest later, and I had already finished writing it, but the interviewer was clearly unhappy and hinted that I should use a sweep line. Changing the code took quit…

Technical Screen0
DoorDashSoftware EngineerSenior+
Sep 2026

Four-Round VO, Menu Review Design Stuck in Schema Details Until Minute 45, Rejected

The phone screen was coding plus a project deep dive. The coding was that Dasher Pay question. The interviewer was really nice: right after I finished writing the code, they just told me not to worry, they were passing me. For the project deep dive, the interviewer listened really carefully and asked a lot of questions. The VO was four rounds. Round 1 was AI coding. I think they have two coding q…

RejectedOnsite0
DoorDashSoftware Engineer
Sep 2026

Resilience, Payments, and Concurrent Dispatch

The author describes an unsuccessful DoorDash interview process beginning with a coding screen about coordinating calls to downstream services. Follow-up discussion addressed failure handling, retries, and when requests should be allowed through or blocked during faults. The final interviews included a donation-service design covering payment processing, failures, lost connections, and duplicate…

RejectedOnsite0
DoorDashSoftware Engineer
Sep 2026

An AI-Coding Onsite Round, Rejected After System Design

Screen interview: Code Craft: Dasher Pay. Didn't feel too hard — just make sure to talk through your approach with the interviewer before you start coding. It's a high-frequency question from the forum. Onsite Round 1: Debugging: Round Robin Load Balancer. Also a forum question. Onsite Round 2: AI Coding. They had me set up a microservice locally on my own machine, specifically to handle abnormal…

RejectedOnsite0
DoorDashSoftware Engineer
Sep 2026

Bootstrap Phone Screen, Consistent Hashing Debug Round, AI Coding DAG, Rejected

Phone screen: it was the classic bootstrap question, same as most of the interview reports out there. The hard part of the question is adding the HTTP response status handling on top. I strongly recommend the public EngineBogie write-up of this one ("Implement a BootstrapService to aggregate data from multiple services"). Onsite: Debug: the question was the same round robin one. It's actually not…

RejectedOnsite1
DoorDashSoftware Engineer
Sep 2026

Five Onsite Rounds Including a Live AI Coding Challenge

Round 1 — Code Craft: Bootstrap / Aggregator API Problem You are tasked with implementing an API that exposes the required information and is as resilient to failures as possible in order to ensure a good user experience. Implement a Bootstrap API that takes a user_id, pulls information from three existing upstream services — Consumer, Payment, and Address — and combines it into a single response…

Onsite1
DoorDashSoftware Engineer
Aug 2026

Recruiter Call to a Four-Round Virtual Onsite, No Offer

Recruiter call: overall this was standard - basic info questions, no BQ really came up in this round. I recall being asked why DoorDash. Passed in a day or two, then got scheduled for the next round quickly - pretty efficient. Code Craft: a simplified version of Dasher Pay, simplified in that there was no coding extension like a double pay rate window. Instead, after finishing the basic coding, t…

RejectedOnsite0
DoorDashSoftware Engineer
Aug 2026

Four-Round Onsite With an AI-Assisted Coding Round

First I got a reach-out from a recruiter, and we set up a quick call to go over the basics and the interview process. Then they scheduled the first technical round. After that round, the process got handed off to another recruiter, who also set up a quick call to go over some basic info, and at the same time scheduled the onsite. The first round was a Code Craft round, 1 hour. The second round wa…

RejectedOnsite0
DoorDashSoftware Engineer
Jul 2026

Four-Round Virtual Onsite, Rejected in Three Days

Interview timeline: 6/15/2026 – DoorDash HR reached out on LinkedIn asking about my availability for an interview. 6/23/2026 – DoorDash first VO round, CodeCraft interview. The question was Dasher Pay — there are already write-ups about this problem, both here and elsewhere. There was a follow-up asking how to handle the double pay rate for dashers during peak hours. After I finished the code, th…

RejectedOnsite0
DoorDashData Scientist
Reported Jul 2026

DoorDash Data Scientist interview: SQL and ambiguous cases

The first round combined a 30-minute SQL assessment and a case study. SQL felt very easy, while the case portion was more difficult: two prompts were straightforward and one was genuinely ambiguous. The next round included three case studies and an interview with a cross-functional partner. The interviewers were kind, but I still had to keep structure and clarity across the scenarios. I did not r…

Technical Screen0
DoorDashData Scientist
Reported Jul 2026

DoorDash Data Scientist interview: SQL and case rounds with one missed concept

After a recruiter screen, I had two screening rounds involving SQL and a case study, followed by more case-study rounds. The onsite-style loop also included a meeting with a cross-functional partner, and I later spoke with a hiring manager. The setup was professional and moved quickly. The data-science questions were not easy. I had done well on the early screens and one case, but a later case br…

HR Screen0
DoorDashData Scientist
Reported Jul 2026

DoorDash Data Scientist interview: take-home after manager screen

I had a quick phone screen and then a Zoom meeting with the hiring manager that lasted about 30 minutes. After that, I completed a take-home assignment and submitted it within 72 hours. That was the end of the process for me. My submission did not move forward, and I did not get another live round. The path looked straightforward on paper, but it was still frustrating because all of my momentum r…

RejectedHR Screen0
DoorDashData Scientist
Reported Jul 2026

DoorDash Data Scientist interview: SQL round and case study before a quick rejection

The loop felt almost entirely about training the interviewers. There was no separate recruiter screening call. It began with a SQL round, then a case study. The recruiter mostly gave a brief introduction, while the two technical sessions carried the process. I finished the SQL questions and explained my thinking to the recruiter as things moved along. The case study also went well, and it felt li…

RejectedTechnical Screen0
DoorDashData Scientist
Reported Jul 2026

DoorDash Data Scientist Interview Experience: SQL, cases, and virtual onsite

An HR-style call covered the role, compensation and benefits, and the hiring flow. The technical screen began with four medium SQL questions in a HackerRank-style format. I barely had time for the last one and got the impression they did not expect a full solution. A case study followed, where I explained how I would approach an open-ended business problem. After passing, I had a virtual onsite w…

0
DoorDashSoftware Engineer
Reported Jul 2026

DoorDash Software Engineer interview: internal electric-motor design screening

It began with a phone call with the recruiter. She was specific about the kind of person she was looking for, then asked technical questions focused on internal electric-motor design knowledge. The material was more targeted than I expected, and it was clear that the screen was trying to establish an exact fit with that technical background. Location: San Francisco, CA. Overall feedback: neutral.…

HR Screen0
DoorDashSoftware Engineer
Reported Jul 2026

DoorDash Software Engineer interview: bilingual 30-minute recruiter call

After the recruiter contacted me, I had an initial conversation of about 30 minutes. The call began in Portuguese and then continued in English. It stayed general: we discussed my previous experience and what I was seeking in compensation, including salary and benefits. It did not advance to the technical part at that stage, so this was the only impression I had of the process. Location: São Paul…

HR Screen0
DoorDashSoftware Engineer
Reported Jul 2026

DoorDash Software Engineer interview: durable refund DAG system design

The process was demanding from the start. After several rounds, I handled behavioral questions that, interestingly, matched my real experiences well. The technical work carried the most weight, especially a system-design challenge about building a durable DAG flow for order refunds. I was overwhelmed at first, but my earlier system-design interview study helped me organize the approach and unlock…

OfferTechnical Screen0
DoorDashSoftware Engineer
Jun 2026

All the Questions Were Predictable, Still Rejected

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RejectedOnsiteXP0
DoorDashSoftware Engineer
May 2026

Onsite With Three Coding Rounds Dressed Up as Delivery Problems

Posting my DoorDash interview experience. My overall impression is that this company's questions are very tied to the business — almost every question comes wrapped in a food-delivery scenario, even when the core is just a template problem. The upside is it's not boring to talk through; the downside is you have to unwrap the packaging first and figure out what the core problem actually is — get t…

Onsite0

What are interview experiences?

An interview experience is a candidate's own account of a hiring loop — not a question bank entry. It tells you the shape of the process: how many rounds there were, what each round actually tested, how long the gaps between them ran, and what the recruiter said at the end. That context is the part a question list cannot give you.

How to read them

Weight recent write-ups more heavily — interview loops change, often within a year. Read several for the same company and role rather than one: a single account tells you what one interviewer asked, while five tell you what the bar is. Note the outcome badge too, since a rejection write-up usually explains the gap far more precisely than an offer one.

Share your own

Every published experience earns 50 XP, and each of the first 3 likes it receives in a day earns you 10 XP more. Likes must come from established accounts; like-for-like swaps and likes from your own second account are not paid. Write it while the details are fresh — the round order, the exact prompts, and how much time you were given are what the next reader needs.

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