I applied online. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Instacart in Sept 2020
Interview
The first round was phone screen with the recruiter, followed by a coding interview. During the coding interview, the interviewer was not interested and was working on the side. While I was explaining the solution, he wasn't listening and at one point said he accidentally had muted me. Very unprofessional. The solution was correct as per this interviewer (idk if he really looked at anything I did) but I was later rejected.
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.
I applied through a recruiter. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Instacart (Toronto, ON) in Sept 2025
Interview
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
I applied through an employee referral. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Instacart (Toronto, ON) in Feb 2025
Interview
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
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Basic ML concept like l1 l2 norm/loss. concept like recall precision etc.
