Researched interview questions, process detail, and difficulty signals for Zillow, compiled by the Primly research team.
6 experiencesDifficulty 3.3/5Proptech
Customer Success Manager (Rentals)
virtual
· Difficulty 3/5
Candidates report a recruiter screen that reviews customer portfolio experience, familiarity with SaaS-like adoption motions, and comfort working with property managers and multifamily operators in a rentals marketplace. The next stage is commonly a hiring manager interview focused on leadership approach, account planning, and how candidates drive adoption of features that improve listing performance and lead handling. Many processes include a role-play or presentation round where candidates walk through a success plan for a rental customer, often using scenarios like improving lead response time, optimizing listing content, or troubleshooting performance drops. A panel loop frequently includes cross-functional interviews with Sales, Product or Partnerships, and sometimes Analytics or Support, testing how candidates escalate product issues and communicate roadmap constraints. Final steps often include a leadership interview and references, with candidates reporting end-to-end timelines of roughly 2 to 5 weeks depending on scheduling and role-play requirements.
A property manager says Zillow leads have declined over the last month and wants to cancel. How would you diagnose the cause and build a retention plan?
Walk through how you would create a 90-day success plan for a new multifamily customer, including onboarding milestones and performance benchmarks.
Role-play: Explain to a customer why listing quality, pricing, and response time affect marketplace performance, and what actions you need from their team.
Describe a time you led a team through a difficult renewal cycle or a sudden churn risk. What operational cadence and metrics did you implement?
Zillow teams often partner closely across functions. Tell an example of how you aligned Sales, Support, and Product when the customer demanded a feature that was not on the roadmap.
Data Scientist (Marketplace / Pricing)
virtual
· Difficulty 4/5
Candidates report starting with a recruiter screen that clarifies domain alignment, such as search relevance, Zestimate-related modeling, rentals marketplace, or partner and lead quality analytics. The next step is often a technical screen that may combine SQL and statistics, with questions framed around marketplace funnels like search to contact to tour or lead quality for agent partners. A take-home case or timed exercise is sometimes used, especially for senior roles, and can involve experiment analysis, metric definition, or model evaluation on a realistic product scenario. The virtual loop typically includes an applied modeling interview, an experimentation and causal inference round, and a product analytics interview that tests metric judgment and stakeholder communication with Product and Engineering. A final conversation with the hiring manager or a senior leader commonly focuses on project leadership, scoping ambiguous problems, and how candidates influence decisions in a cross-functional environment; overall timelines are frequently reported as about 3 to 6 weeks.
Write SQL to compute a weekly conversion funnel for a home search feature (search sessions to listing views to ‘contact agent’ events), ensuring deduplication and clear session definitions.
A/B test results show higher lead submissions but lower downstream closed-loop quality. How would you decide whether to ship, and what additional analysis would you run?
Define guardrail metrics for changes to a Zestimate-adjacent experience or pricing insight feature. What would you monitor to prevent harm to trust and engagement?
Explain how you would evaluate and monitor a model that predicts likelihood to request a tour or contact an agent, including bias checks and calibration.
Describe a time you influenced a product decision when the data were noisy or incomplete. How did you communicate uncertainty to stakeholders?
Software Engineer (Mobile - iOS/Android)
virtual
· Difficulty 4/5
Candidates report a recruiter screen focused on role fit, team matching (for example, core home search, rentals, or touring experiences), and logistics, typically followed within a week by an initial technical screen. The technical screen is commonly a live coding session, often emphasizing fundamentals and pragmatic app development tradeoffs rather than purely academic puzzles. Next, candidates typically complete a virtual panel loop of 3 to 5 interviews that blends coding, mobile architecture, and cross-functional collaboration, with at least one round dedicated to system or app design. A behavioral interview is usually included to assess alignment with Zillow’s collaborative culture and product focus, often probing how candidates work with Product and Design in a consumer marketplace context. Final steps often include a hiring manager conversation and reference checks, with end-to-end timelines commonly spanning roughly 2 to 4 weeks depending on interviewer availability.
In Swift or Kotlin, implement a function that transforms and filters a list of home search results (for example, price, beds, days on market) and explain time and space complexity.
Design a mobile app architecture for a feed-style home search experience with offline caching, pagination, and error handling. How would state management and networking be structured?
A release introduces a noticeable scroll jank on a listing results screen. How would you diagnose whether it is image loading, layout, main-thread work, or networking, and what tools would you use?
Describe a time you disagreed with a Product or Design decision that affected usability. How did you influence the outcome and what metrics did you use to judge success?
Zillow’s products handle sensitive user intent and location data. What privacy and security considerations would you prioritize in a mobile implementation?