Did the DoorDash PM loop last fall for a senior PM role on the merchant side. Writing this because the PM interview info out there is mostly generic. Here's what actually happened.
Loop structure: Recruiter screen, then a take-home, then virtual onsite with four rounds. Total elapsed time from application to offer: about 5 weeks. Faster than most.
Take-home: Product case. You get a prompt roughly 48-72 hours before a presentation round, then present live to a panel. Mine was about a hypothetical feature for the merchant experience, basically: how would you design and prioritize improvements to help restaurant partners succeed on the platform. 30-minute presentation, 15 minutes of Q&A.
They want a crisp problem definition, user research thinking, metrics, prioritization framework, and a roadmap. Don't just generate a feature list. The differentiation is in the prioritization logic and how you handle tradeoffs.
Onsite rounds: Product intuition: they give you a live product question. Mine was about redesigning part of the consumer ordering flow. No deck. Think out loud. They're testing how you frame user problems and what questions you ask. Analytical: SQL-adjacent, not actual SQL coding, but a data interpretation question. If X happens in the data, what would you investigate? What hypotheses? I've heard this varies by team. Behavioral: standard STAR questions but focused on cross-functional influence, handling ambiguity, and owning outcomes under pressure. Leadership/strategy: more senior-level, about how I'd set direction for a team, prioritize in a constrained environment.
What mattered: Market awareness. The interviewer for the product intuition round clearly wanted me to understand the marketplace economics, not just consumer UX. Knowing that merchant economics are fragile and that delivery margin pressure is real gave me a frame they responded to. It's not just about a nice consumer app.
Overall: More rigorous than most PM loops I've been through. The take-home alone weeds out people who are fuzzy on the fundamentals.