I had the usual phone call and then a coding test after that, but I did not get beyond that stage. Nothing was out of the ordinary, everything was very standard and there were no surprises. The recruiter was very good compared to other companies as of late.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Walking through my resume, experiences, how my previous work would be relevant to the role. There was more infrastructure based work than I had expected based off the job posting, which I guess is quite common but not what I wanted.
Reflecting on the experience, I gained valuable insights, even though I ultimately declined the offer. The interview started with a technical round, where I faced a coding question about finding the smallest window in a string. It hit me that this was a problem I had worked on through PracHub just days before. Following that, there was a system design question focused on creating a real-time chat system. The process was smooth, and the interviewers were approachable, making it a positive journey overall.
Interview questions [2]
Question 1
Find the smallest window in a string containing all target characters
Hr technical recruiter
Technical coding - HashMap and state management related question.
System Design - Time passed too quickly if you're new to it
Behavioural -
Recent project you're proud of
What was your role?
What was impact?
How did you measure?
Tell me about failure
Did you convince your colleague about your solution and how?
What's inclusion for you
I applied online. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Lyft (Toronto, ON) in May 2026
Interview
My experience wasn’t great with Lyft.
During my system design interview, my interviewer kept silent most of the time.
No communication, and he seems to end my interview session as soon as possible.
Be careful about this
Software Engineer applicants have rated the interview process at Lyft with 3 out of 5 (where 5 is the highest level of difficulty) and assessed their interview experience as 48% positive. To compare, the company-average is 63% positive. This is according to Glassdoor user ratings.
Candidates applying for Software Engineer roles take an average of 19 days to get hired, when considering 108 user submitted interviews for this role. To compare, the hiring process at Lyft overall takes an average of 20 days.
Common stages of the interview process at Lyft as a Software Engineer according to 108 Glassdoor interviews include:
Phone interview: 45%
One on one interview: 24%
Presentation: 9%
Group panel interview: 8%
Skills test: 7%
Drug test: 2%
Background check: 2%
Personality test: 1%
IQ intelligence test: 1%
Other: 1%
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