Instacart

Senior Software Engineer Interview Experience

June 23, 2021

Negative ExperienceGot Offer

Process

I was very disappointed with the hiring process. All coding rounds were robotic in nature and missed the human/collaborative element altogether. Looking at the coding interviews gives me no confidence that I would want to work at such a company.

Questions

The question doesn't matter; they are similar to questions posted earlier.

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Interview Statistics

The following metrics were computed from 20 interview experiences for the Instacart Senior Software Engineer role in United States.

Success Rate

5%

Pass Rate

Instacart's interview process for their Senior Software Engineer roles in the United States is extremely selective, failing the vast majority of engineers.

Experience Rating

Positive35%

Neutral5%

Negative60%

Candidates reported having very negative feelings for Instacart's Senior Software Engineer interview process in United States.

Instacart Work Experiences

Decent company with solid benefits

Senior Software Engineer • Current Employee

January 9, 2025

Pros: Solid, profitable company. Pay is competitive. Actually remote-friendly. Company seems to make solid business decisions for the most part.

Cons: Sometimes it feels like leadership had no direction in technical decisions. There was little interest from many software teams to collaborate outside their team or improve things that do not directly translate to material for their promotion. There was little interest in being a real “tech” company or innovating on anything.

Decent company with solid benefits

Senior Software Engineer • Current Employee

January 9, 2025

Pros: Solid, profitable company. Pay is competitive. Actually remote-friendly. Company seems to make solid business decisions for the most part.

Cons: Sometimes it feels like leadership had no direction in technical decisions. There was little interest from many software teams to collaborate outside their team or improve things that do not directly translate to material for their promotion. There was little interest in being a real “tech” company or innovating on anything.

Lots of growth potential

Senior Software Engineer • Current Employee

Pros: The company vision is great. Lots of smart people to work with.

Cons: Work-life balance can be out of whack. The pace is very high.

Lots of growth potential

Senior Software Engineer • Current Employee

Pros: The company vision is great. Lots of smart people to work with.

Cons: Work-life balance can be out of whack. The pace is very high.

It wasn't for me

Senior Software Engineer • Former Employee

Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Pros: I was able to program in Ruby.

Cons: Everything else, I have never in my life worked for a company that was so disorganized.

It wasn't for me

Senior Software Engineer • Former Employee

Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Pros: I was able to program in Ruby.

Cons: Everything else, I have never in my life worked for a company that was so disorganized.

Decent company with solid benefits

Senior Software Engineer • Current Employee

January 9, 2025

Pros: Solid, profitable company. Pay is competitive. Actually remote-friendly. Company seems to make solid business decisions for the most part.

Cons: Sometimes it feels like leadership had no direction in technical decisions. There was little interest from many software teams to collaborate outside their team or improve things that do not directly translate to material for their promotion. There was little interest in being a real “tech” company or innovating on anything.

4.0
Decent company with solid benefits
Senior Software Engineer • Current Employee
January 9, 2025
Pros: Solid, profitable company. Pay is competitive. Actually remote-friendly. Company seems to make solid business decisions for the most part.
Cons: Sometimes it feels like leadership had no direction in technical decisions. There was little interest from many software teams to collaborate outside their team or improve things that do not directly translate to material for their promotion. There was little interest in being a real “tech” company or innovating on anything.

Lots of growth potential

Senior Software Engineer • Current Employee

Pros: The company vision is great. Lots of smart people to work with.

Cons: Work-life balance can be out of whack. The pace is very high.

5.0
Lots of growth potential
Senior Software Engineer • Current Employee
March 6, 2024
Pros: The company vision is great. Lots of smart people to work with.
Cons: Work-life balance can be out of whack. The pace is very high.

It wasn't for me

Senior Software Engineer • Former Employee

Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Pros: I was able to program in Ruby.

Cons: Everything else, I have never in my life worked for a company that was so disorganized.

2.0
It wasn't for me
Senior Software Engineer • Former Employee
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
April 3, 2025
Pros: I was able to program in Ruby.
Cons: Everything else, I have never in my life worked for a company that was so disorganized.

Instacart Interview Questions

Average Waiting Time

You're given a list of customer arrival and service times. Calculate the average waiting time for all customers, assuming they are served in the order they arrive.

Find First and Last Position of Element in Sorted Array

Given a sorted array, find the first and last position of a given target value. If the target is not found, return [-1, -1].

ArraysBinary Search

Check if Every Row and Column Contains All Numbers

Determine if every row and every column in a given square matrix contains all the numbers from 1 to n, where n is the size of the matrix. Effectively, check if it's a valid Sudoku (without subgrids).

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