currently in the middle of the Instacart new grad SWE process and documenting everything because I'm nervous and this is how I cope.
some context: I graduated May 2025, computer science, state school, did one solid internship. found this opening through a college career fair listing that was still live.
what i know so far:
the OA (online assessment) was 2 leetcode-style problems on Hackerrank. one felt like a medium (sliding window / string manipulation). one was harder and felt like medium-hard graph traversal. I think I got 4 of 6 test cases on the second. still moved forward so maybe they don't need a perfect score.
phone screen was with a software engineer, not a recruiter. 45 minutes: 15 min background questions, 30 min one coding problem. the problem was a tree problem, BFS variant. they cared a lot about me talking through my approach before writing code. I rushed to code the first time I interviewed somewhere else and bombed it, so this time I forced myself to talk first and it felt much better.
what i'm told is coming: onsite (virtual): 2 coding rounds, 1 system design, 1 behavioral the system design round for new grads is apparently scoped differently than for experienced hires. they might ask something like "design a URL shortener" vs the full distributed systems stuff
how i'm prepping: neetcode 150 for coding (about 80 done) reading "Designing Data-Intensive Applications" for conceptual system design foundations writing out STAR answers for about 12 behavioral questions
will update after the virtual onsite. if anyone else is doing the Instacart entry level loop in 2026 please drop what you're seeing.