The phone screen was surprisingly short, only about 20 minutes, focusing on my background and some general ML concepts. Then came the technical round where I had to design a ranking model for Instacart’s search results. Midway through, it hit me that I had just practiced a very similar problem on PracHub, which made me feel a bit more confident. However, the depth of the discussion, especially around metrics and cold-start items, was intense. In the end, I didn’t receive an offer, but it was a decent experience overall.
Entretien difficile
Candidature
J'ai passé un entretien chez Instacart
Entretien
Initial Call with a Recruiter. Talked about visa situation and salary expectations. Moved forward to a technical round with a senior engineer. It was a moderate interview , signed an NDA so cannot disclose actual questions. After the technical interview was onsite interview via Zoom because of Covid. 5 rounds onsite three technical, one with hiring manager and on Systems design interview with a group.
J'ai postulé via un recruteur. Le processus a pris 3 semaines. J'ai passé un entretien chez Instacart (Toronto, ON) en sept. 2025
Entretien
1 round of HR screen, 4 rounds of technical
Technical:
- ML alg knowledge
- Live code - Leetcode style
- Case study: they give you a case
- Retro study: walk them through a past project
J'ai postulé via la recommandation d'un employé. Le processus a pris 4 semaines. J'ai passé un entretien chez Instacart (Toronto, ON) en févr. 2025
Entretien
There are four round in total:
1 code (leetcode easy level)
2 ML concept (focus on fundamental traditional ML stuff)
3 ML system design
4 BQ and project
NDA signed for last two rounds. But the recruiter will tell you the expected topic
Questions d'entretien [1]
Question 1
Basic ML concept like l1 l2 norm/loss. concept like recall precision etc.