Software Engineer applicants have rated the interview process at Instacart with 3.1 out of 5 (where 5 is the highest level of difficulty) and assessed their interview experience as 27% positive. To compare, the company-average is 46% positive. This is according to Glassdoor user ratings.
Candidates applying for Software Engineer roles take an average of 18 days to get hired, when considering 22 user submitted interviews for this role. To compare, the hiring process at Instacart overall takes an average of 16 days.
Common stages of the interview process at Instacart as a Software Engineer according to 22 Glassdoor interviews include:
Phone interview: 46%
One on one interview: 18%
Skills test: 14%
Group panel interview: 7%
Background check: 4%
Drug test: 4%
Presentation: 4%
Personality test: 4%
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The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Instacart (Oxnard, CA) in Dec 2018
Interview
At first I had a call with the recruiter which was awesome. He explained the general process was a chat with the hiring manager, maybe a take home coding test, and then an on-site. I had a call with the hiring manager which I felt went great. The recruiter emailed me after and said that he got positive feedback and he'd get back to me the next week with the next steps. After a month of no contact I reached out to inquire about how things were going. No reply. I got completely ghosted by the recruiter. Not even a "we are sorry but we moved forward with another candidate" type response. To me, this is very unprofessional.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
What was the most challenging project you worked on?
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.