Went through the PepsiCo behavioral round twice now. Once for a senior SWE role a couple years ago, and then again this year. Sharing what I know because the prep advice online for PepsiCo behavioral is unusually thin.
PepsiCo structures their behavioral round around something they call their "PepsiCo Way" competencies. You'll see references to this on their careers site. In practice in 2026, the categories you should prep around are:
Collaboration: They care a lot about cross-functional work. Questions like "tell me about a time you had to align stakeholders who disagreed" come up reliably. If you're interviewing for their digital/tech org, they want to hear that you can work with the legacy business side, not just engineers.
Drive for results / ownership: Standard competency but they weight it heavily. They want specifics: what was the goal, what was your contribution specifically, what happened. Don't speak in team terms the entire time.
Agility / adaptability: This one surprised me. They ask about handling change, failed plans, pivoting mid-project. I think this reflects genuine organizational reality: PepsiCo is a big company that's been reinventing its tech stack for years, and things change.
Consumer focus: Especially for roles touching product or ecommerce, they want you to tie technical decisions back to end-user or business impact. Not just "I built the thing" but "and here's what improved."
The format was four questions in 45 minutes. STAR structure expected, but interviewers don't want a perfectly rehearsed performance. Two interviewers took notes simultaneously. I noticed them writing less when my answers got too polished and more when I was specific and honest about what didn't go well.
One thing that's different from pure tech companies: they'll probe on how you handled a mistake or a project failure. Don't dodge it. The cultural expectation is candor about what you'd do differently. Over-engineering the answer actually hurts you here.
PepsiCo isn't trying to be Google. They're a massive food and beverage company with a real tech org inside it. The behavioral round reflects that hybrid identity.