Instacart Software Engineer interview experience

The onsite was four parts: two coding interviews, then a system design interview combined with a behavioral component. My coding interviews felt pretty easy to me, but I didn’t land well on system design.

I was pretty sure that was the gap because everything else went smoothly enough, and that final design conversation didn’t go the way I needed. Even though the loop didn’t feel chaotic, the mismatch on system design was enough for a rejection.