Instacart Data Scientist interview experience

I had to design an approach and then talk through my thinking as I went—especially around feature engineering and the modeling choices. I felt stressed at the start because I was trying to keep the structure of my solution crisp, but once I recognized the underlying shape of the problem, it clicked.

After the technical part, the rest of the process shifted into behavioral questions centered on my past experiences. It was intense, but I felt rewarded by how directly they engaged with my reasoning instead of just checking answers. I ultimately received an offer, but I declined after careful