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Interview Questions
Practice 9403 coding, system design and machine learning questions from 546 companies, sorted by role, topic and interview round. Every question has step-by-step hints, a code runner that supports 8 languages and an AI mentor; members also get the full solution walkthrough.
- 9403
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Showing 4201–4230 of 9403 results
- InstacartMediumSoftware EngineerEvaluate a Target Variable from Assignments with Plus, Minus, Cycles and Conflicts
A three-part coding exercise that computes a target variable's value from a list of assignment equations. It starts with right-hand sides that are numbers or other variables, adds addition and subtraction with cross-references, and finally requires an empty string for cycles, undefined variables and conflicting assignments.
Software Engineering FundamentalsTechnical Screen - InstacartMediumSoftware EngineerEvaluate a Variable from Chained Assignments with +/- Expressions and Cycle Detection
A coding problem that evaluates a target variable from chained assignments such as T1 = T2 and T2 = 5, then extends to right-hand sides with plus and minus and to inputs that may contain cycles. It tests parsing, memoized dependency resolution and cycle detection that does not flag shared dependencies.
Software Engineering FundamentalsOnsite - InstacartMediumSoftware EngineerEvaluate an arithmetic expression
This question tests the ability to evaluate a mathematical string containing integers, addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, requiring an understanding of operator precedence and the use of stacks.
Coding & AlgorithmsTechnical ScreenStackParsingMath - InstacartMediumSoftware EngineerEvaluate arithmetic expression using DFS
This question evaluates a candidate's understanding of expression parsing and evaluation using depth-first traversal, covering competencies in recursive descent or stack-based DFS, operator precedence, unary operators, and 64-bit integer division semantics with truncation toward zero.
Coding & AlgorithmsHR Screen - InstacartMediumSoftware EngineerEvaluate arithmetic expression with precedence
Instacart software-engineer onsite coding question: implement an arithmetic expression evaluator for a string of non-negative integers, +, -, *, /, parentheses, and spaces. It tests operator precedence and associativity, unary minus, 64-bit intermediates, integer division truncating toward zero, and robust handling of invalid input via a two-stack, shunting-yard, or recursive-descent parser.
Coding & AlgorithmsOnsite - InstacartMediumSoftware EngineerEvaluate dependent variable expressions
This question evaluates a candidate's ability to parse and evaluate assignment expressions, resolve inter-variable dependencies, and detect cycles or unsolvable references.
Coding & AlgorithmsOnsite - InstacartHardSoftware EngineerEvaluate query ratios from equations
This problem tests your ability to model algebraic relationships as a weighted directed graph and perform pathfinding to calculate ratios between variables.
Coding & AlgorithmsTechnical ScreenGraphBFS/DFSMath - InstacartHardMachine Learning EngineerExplain Core ML Concepts
This question tests the conceptual understanding of supervised learning foundations, the mathematical relationship between regression techniques, and the convergence behavior of optimization algorithms.
Machine LearningTechnical ScreenLinear RegressionLogistic RegressionOptimization - InstacartMediumSoftware EngineerExplain Technical Tradeoffs in a Project You Led
Discuss a led project through concrete technical alternatives, implementation details, personal ownership, coordination, and supported outcomes.
Behavioral & LeadershipOnsite - InstacartMediumAI Analytics Lead IIExplain a High-Impact Analytics Project Enabled by AI
Tests your ability to present an end-to-end, AI-driven analytics project with a focus on problem framing, baseline benchmarks, guardrails, cross-functional adoption, and quantifiable business value.
Behavioral & LeadershipTechnical ScreenBehavioralAnalytics LeadershipMachine Learning - InstacartMediumData ScientistExplain handling very large datasets
This question evaluates a candidate's competence in ingesting and processing very large datasets, covering storage formats and partitioning, memory and compute constraints, schema evolution, data quality checks, indexing strategies, tool selection in SQL/Python ecosystems, and code-level performance optimizations.
Data Manipulation (SQL/Python)HR Screen - InstacartMediumSoftware EngineerExplain your biggest project with trade-offs
This question evaluates technical leadership, system-design trade-off analysis, communication, and conflict-resolution competencies by probing a candidate's most impactful project, role, technical design choices, and a real teammate disagreement.
Behavioral & LeadershipOnsite - InstacartMediumBackend EngineerFix the Broken Search Filter in a Book Catalog API
This problem tests your ability to sanitize inputs and implement robust filtering logic on a collection of structured objects using multiple criteria.
Coding & AlgorithmsOnline AssessmentFilteringStringsBackend - InstacartEasyData ScientistHow to debug an apparent D14 retention drop
This question evaluates competency in cohort-based retention analysis, understanding metric maturity and right-censoring, performing data quality and definition checks, and localizing real declines across segments, releases, or funnel changes.
Analytics & ExperimentationTechnical Screen - InstacartEasyData ScientistHow would you investigate a metric decline?
This question evaluates a data scientist's competency in diagnostic analytics, metric instrumentation awareness, causal reasoning, and segmentation-driven problem localization for consumer marketplace KPIs.
Analytics & ExperimentationTechnical Screen - InstacartMediumSoftware EngineerImplement a pivot table transformation
This question evaluates competency in data transformation and aggregation, specifically pivot operations, time-based grouping, null handling, dimensionality reduction (top‑K/OTHER), scalability for large datasets, and expressing solutions in both Python (pandas or pure) and SQL within the Data Manipulation (SQL/Python) domain.
Data Manipulation (SQL/Python)Onsite - InstacartMediumSoftware EngineerImplement an In-Memory File Storage System
This question evaluates the ability to design and implement efficient in-memory data structures and algorithms for stateful file management, covering string-keyed storage, size accounting, querying and sorting, and user quota enforcement.
Coding & AlgorithmsOnline Assessment - InstacartMediumSoftware EngineerImplement bus route simulation features
This question evaluates a candidate's skills in stateful event-driven simulation, data-structure and algorithm design for capacity-constrained boarding and dropping logic, and statistical downsampling to preserve origin–destination demand distributions.
Coding & AlgorithmsOnsite - InstacartMediumSoftware EngineerImplement matrix-indexing and expression resolver
This question evaluates a candidate's ability to parse structured text files, perform matrix indexing with a nonstandard origin convention, reconstruct data across multiple blocks, and resolve symbolic variable expressions and dependencies for arithmetic evaluation in the Coding & Algorithms domain.
Coding & AlgorithmsOnsite - InstacartMediumSoftware EngineerImplement multiple coding round problems
This problem tests your ability to manage a time-sensitive priority queue, handle dynamic variable substitution in expressions, and optimize for streaming data processing.
Coding & AlgorithmsTechnical ScreenHeapStackParsing - InstacartMediumSoftware EngineerImplement prefix and suffix file search
This question evaluates the ability to design and implement efficient string-indexing data structures and APIs for prefix-and-suffix matching, demonstrating competency with tries, suffix-related structures, inverted indexes, and time/space complexity trade-offs.
Coding & AlgorithmsOnline Assessment - InstacartHardSoftware EngineerImplement store, evaluator, and parser
This problem tests your ability to design a robust in-memory data store with versioning and TTL, implement an expression evaluator for dependencies, and parse a specialized stream of matrix data.
Coding & AlgorithmsOnsiteData StructuresHashingRecursion - InstacartMediumSoftware EngineerImplement timestamped task management system APIs
This question evaluates a candidate's ability to design and implement time-ordered in-memory data structures and APIs, testing competencies in temporal event ordering and precedence, scheduled deletions, priority-sorted retrieval, user-task assignment, and historical (time-travel) queries.
Coding & AlgorithmsOnline Assessment - InstacartHardSoftware EngineerImplement worker time and payroll tracker
This problem tests your ability to manage overlapping time intervals, perform efficient lookups on historical state changes, and calculate cumulative payroll based on dynamic shift rates.
Coding & AlgorithmsOnline AssessmentIntervalsBinary SearchData Structures - InstacartHardData ScientistImprove low R² without p‑hacking
This question evaluates competence in statistical modeling and causal inference, covering regression diagnostics, feature engineering and interactions, appropriate error distributions and link functions, leakage detection, model selection and validation, and the trade-off between predictive accuracy and valid effect estimation.
Machine LearningOnsite - InstacartMediumData ScientistInvestigate Instacart Revenue Decline Using Weekly Data
Instacart analytics prompt on investigating a 4% weekly revenue decline, covering time-series anomaly detection, seasonality, changepoints, prediction intervals, and richer-data decomposition by orders, AOV, geography, cohorts, and categories.
Analytics & ExperimentationTechnical Screen - InstacartEasyData ScientistInvestigate marketplace metrics and experiment rollout
This question evaluates competency in marketplace analytics, causal inference, experimentation design, metric instrumentation, cohort and retention analysis, and trade-off reasoning between core business metrics and secondary signals.
Analytics & ExperimentationTechnical Screen - InstacartMediumData ScientistJustify Instacart fit and leaving your role
This question evaluates a data scientist's ability to articulate company and product-market fit, quantify near-term impact, communicate transition logistics, and demonstrate self-awareness through managerial feedback and constraints.
Behavioral & LeadershipHR Screen - InstacartHardData ScientistLead a zero-to-one initiative effectively
This question evaluates a data-oriented leader's ability to translate an ambiguous mandate into a measurable initiative by testing skills in problem definition, metric design, discovery and experimentation planning, stakeholder alignment, prioritization, and trade-off reasoning within a two-sided marketplace context.
Behavioral & LeadershipHR Screen - InstacartHardSoftware EngineerLibrary Catalog and Lending System: Five-Phase Engineering Assessment
This problem tests the ability to design an extensible lending system, implement a search algorithm with concurrency constraints, and debug race conditions in a multi-threaded environment.
Software Engineering FundamentalsOnline Assessmentconcurrencydata-structuressystem-design
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