I applied online. The process took 1 week. I interviewed at Instacart (Toronto, ON) in Mar 2021
Interview
Had a recruiter call at first, then technical phone screen. The recruiter call was nice, but the technical interviewer was not paying attention past the first minute. Her Slack notifications kept going off and I could hear her typing. She said it was a multi-part interview, but did not timebox at all for any of the parts, so I started doing it for her. The question was very simple, but I was really confused when she asked me to code out every single test case I described. All engineers know tests are very tedious and a time sink to write, so I'm not sure why she asked me to do it in a multi-part interview setting. We ran out of time after all of the test cases I had to write so she just said "looks like you're out of time" and hung up? Definitely one of the worst interview experiences I've had.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
NDA -- but looks like everyone had the same question based on other interview reviews.
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.