just finished the Starbucks online assessment last week. posting because the info online is sparse and i wasted two days not knowing what format to expect.
format: it's on HackerRank. two coding problems, 90 minutes total. not timed per problem, you manage the time yourself.
difficulty: medium LeetCode range for both. one was a graph/BFS problem, one was string manipulation with some edge cases around unicode (fitting for a company with a lot of international menu names i guess). neither was anything close to hard-level FAANG problems.
one problem had a follow-up that asked about the time complexity if you switched your approach. they weren't grading it live but i wrote my analysis in the comments anyway, not sure if that helps.
languages allowed: Java, Python, C++, JavaScript, C#. i used Python.
what i wish i knew: the test cases shown are NOT all the test cases. i passed visible ones but had to rethink my solution when hidden tests revealed an edge case i missed (empty input on the string problem). always think about null/empty inputs. there are also 2-3 multiple choice questions at the start about time/space complexity. pretty easy, more like sanity checks. no system design, no SQL in the OA. that's separate later.
turnaround was fast. i got an email from my recruiter 6 days after submitting saying they wanted to move forward to a phone screen. recruiter was at Starbucks corporate in Seattle.
i'm a new grad applying for a software engineer role (not intern). timeline started with a referral which probably helped with getting the OA invite in the first place.
any questions happy to answer. just grateful i finally found some signal before going in.