Interview Experiences

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

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19 stories

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InstacartSoftware Engineer
Oct 2026

Four-Round Virtual Onsite, Shopping Cart and Equations Coding

There were 4 rounds in total. Round 1, coding: the shopping cart problem (it's all over the forum already). The third part of this one was a bit confusing, because it said it's not just about putting frozen items last, the relative distance between aisles also has to be close, mainly to reduce the shopper's total pickup distance. I didn't have time to write the third follow-up at all, so I don't…

Onsite0
InstacartSoftware Engineer
Oct 2026

Two Coding Rounds, System Design on Inventory, Waiting on Results

While preparing I kept grinding system design, and it turned out my coding wasn't as fast as I thought it would be. One round was "Calculate Equation Expression": you're given a set of variable assignments and have to compute the value of a specified variable. Part one: the right-hand side is either a number or another variable, so you just recurse down. Part two adds addition and subtraction, an…

In progressOnsite0
InstacartSoftware Engineer
Sep 2026

AI Debugging and Unclear Coding Assumptions

The author reports an unsuccessful Instacart backend interview process involving CodeSignal assessments and human-led coding. The first onsite segment included a 90-minute library-application exercise and two hour-long coding interviews. AI was available for the application task, but only to explain code and help localize bugs, not to provide direct fixes. The author says the required changes ult…

RejectedOnsite0
InstacartSoftware Engineer
Sep 2026

Two Coding Rounds, a Manager BQ Chat, and a System Design Round

Two rounds of coding, and both were problems that had already been posted elsewhere before. The first one: the input is a transaction record and a set of discounts, and the discounts come in two types — one is a straight percentage off, the other is buy x get y free. The result you need to return is the best (lowest) price. There were 3 parts total, and I only got through the second part before t…

RejectedOnsite0
InstacartSoftware EngineerSenior+
Sep 2026

Grocery Pricing Coding, Inventory System Design, and a 20-Minute Behavioral

Two coding rounds, one system design round, and one behavioral round. Coding question 1 Given input strings in the format SKUid|SKUNAME|QUANTITY|Price, output the total quantity and the total price in dollars. The price in the input is in cents. Watch out for bad input. Besides the input above, there is also a discount input, in the formats SKUid|axf|20 and SKUid|bxf|5|2. The first format is a 20…

RejectedOnsite0
InstacartSoftware Engineer
Sep 2026

A 90-Minute AI-Assisted OA and Next-Day Rejection

I took the Instacart Full-Stack Engineer Assessment on Codesignal on September, after referred by an employee of the company. It was similar to what posted in the platform here: 5 questions, 90 minutes. Two questions involved chatting with the AI to get the requirements. Two AI assisted Coding with Claude Code, and One bug fixing question withouot AI. There was a tab that showed the live results…

RejectedOnline Assessment0
InstacartSoftware EngineerSenior+
Sep 2026

Fast Coding and a Difficult Bar Raiser

The virtual onsite had two coding rounds, one design round, and one bar-raiser round. The coding questions were ones from interview reports, and easier than the versions on the forum. I breezed through both. For the calculate-expression question, the interviewer said in part two that there would always be spaces around the +, =, and - signs, so parsing was straightforward. In part three, the only…

RejectedOnsite2
InstacartSoftware Engineer
Sep 2026

Library OA, Pricing, and Inventory Design

I translated this passage into Chinese as follows: All the questions I received were exactly the same as those in another post. 0) OA: A full-stack CodeSignal repository test, with AI. A book/library management system. 1) Coding problem 1: The first problem was translating expressions (T1 = T4). 2) Coding problem 2: Calculate the total price of products in an array of strings, in the format sku|p…

Onsite1
InstacartSoftware Engineer
Sep 2026

A Full-Stack CodeSignal Challenge With No Tests to Check My Work

I recently completed an Instacart CodeSignal assessment that was very different from the usual LeetCode-style rounds. It was a full-stack repository-based assessment, and some sections required me to have conversations with an AI "Product Manager" before making changes. Very annoying. Because unlike other CodeSignal rounds there are no tests to test against!! So I had no idea how well I did and u…

RejectedOnline Assessment0
InstacartSoftware Engineer
Aug 2026

L5 Interviews in Canada and Team Matching

It took almost a month after I applied for HR to reach out. I had almost thought I'd been rejected. The OA was the vibe-coding OA that people have been talking about a lot on the forum lately. After doing it myself, I felt that ten minutes to communicate with the AI product manager was nowhere near enough, unless I used speech-to-text input. Onsite 1: Calculate Equation Expression. Onsite 2: A re…

In progressOnsite0
InstacartSoftware Engineer
Aug 2026

Five-Round AI Online Assessment

I barely scraped by. As far as I can tell, there's currently only one question in the question bank — a library book search/borrowing system. There's already a very detailed writeup of this question in another post, so I'll just add a few of my own thoughts here: For round 1 and round 4, when talking to the AI PM, try to put all your questions into a single prompt and have the AI PM answer everyt…

In progressOnline Assessment0
InstacartSoftware Engineer
Jul 2026

A Single CodeSignal OA Question With Five Escalating Follow-ups

The first step was an OA on CodeSignal. There was a lot of identity verification along the way — anti-cheating checks. It was one question with multiple follow-ups, getting progressively harder. The OA email said you didn't need to finish everything, and honestly I don't think it's possible to finish it all — 90 minutes, 5 parts. The problem gave you template code. Implement account creation: cre…

In progressOnline Assessment0
InstacartSoftware Engineer
Jun 2026

Hit With a Brand-New Question, Failed on BQ

A totally new question I'd never seen before, and I was the one who got hit with it. I feel like every question in this loop had a pretty large amount of code, so everyone should practice a lot. I think I failed because of the new question and the BQ — I prepared for BQ the Amazon way, but in practice it felt more like a casual conversation, and I wasn't quite ready for that. Coding round: the cl…

RejectedOnsite0
InstacartSoftware Engineer
May 2026

Karat Phone Screen, Rejected Two Weeks Later

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RejectedTechnical ScreenPremium0
InstacartSoftware Engineer
Feb 2026

An OA Question About Workers Nobody Had Seen Before

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In progressOnline AssessmentXP0
InstacartSoftware EngineerSenior+
Jan 2026

OA, Two Coding Rounds, and a Karat AI Coding Round

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OnsiteXP0
InstacartSoftware Engineer
Jan 2026

OA, Three Codings, and a Karat AI Round That Went Sideways

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RejectedOnsiteXP0
InstacartSoftware Engineer
Oct 2025

VO Split Into VO1/VO2, Karat AI-Coding Round

I got hit with Instacart's VO reform. The onsite is now split into two parts, VO1 and VO2 — if you fail VO1, there's no VO2, that's just it. VO1 has three rounds: First, the Karat round, which is AI coding. I hadn't used AI tools in a while so I wasn't used to it, and I only got through the fourth question before time ran out. The questions were: Given a codebase on a bus route simulation: How do…

Onsite0
InstacartSoftware Engineer
Sep 2025

Waiting on Team Match After the Exact Same Loop as Last Year

My virtual onsite (VO) was two weeks ago, and I got the result last week — I'm through, and now I'm waiting on team match. Coding round 1: two questions, both about shopper deliveries. The first one referenced something specific that doesn't translate cleanly from how I originally wrote it, so I can't say more about it here. The second one was a bit more involved, but if you'd already seen the fi…

In progressOnsite0

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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