just finished the full loop for a senior software engineer role at IKEA Digital (the Helsingborg / Malmö hub, though the role was remote-eligible). posting notes while they're fresh.
stage 1 was a recruiter screen, about 30 minutes. pretty standard: motivation for the role, work history, salary range. the recruiter was from their in-house talent team, not an agency, and was genuinely knowledgeable about the engineering org. they asked if i had experience in e-commerce platforms or supply-chain systems, which makes sense given what IKEA is.
stage 2 was a 45-minute technical screen with a senior engineer. they shared a coderpad. the problem was medium difficulty, roughly a graph traversal question. they cared a lot about how i talked through my approach before writing code. i got stuck on an edge case and they gave a nudge. felt collaborative, not adversarial.
stage 3 was the system design round. 60 minutes, two engineers. they wanted me to design a product catalog service that could handle high-read volumes and needed to be localized across 40+ markets. lots of discussion on caching layers, CDN design, content syndication. felt very specific to their actual business, not a generic 'design Twitter' prompt.
stage 4 was a behavioral / values panel, 45 minutes. three people including a hiring manager and an HR business partner. very IKEA-specific: they asked about sustainability decisions, cost-consciousness, working across cultures. the IKEA values are genuinely woven into this round, not just performance.
stage 5 was a final conversation with an engineering director. more of a two-way discussion about team direction, tech strategy, what i wanted to learn. maybe 30 minutes.
total elapsed time: about 5 weeks from recruiter screen to offer call. feedback was delivered verbally, not written.
a few things that surprised me: they really do care about the 'democratic design' mindset (simple, functional, affordable). answers that only showed technical depth without acknowledging constraints or user impact landed poorly in the panel. if you're coming from pure FAANG culture, recalibrate a bit.
comp was below pure tech-company market rate but the total benefits package (especially in Europe) is solid. more on that in a separate thread.