Deliveroo Interview Experience| L6 Staff Engineer | May 2025 | India

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deliveroo
L6 Staff EngineerIndia11.5 years
June 18, 20253 reads

Summary

My interview loop for a Staff Engineer role at Deliveroo in India involved DSA, system design, and behavioral rounds, with a focus on ownership and open-ended thinking, culminating in an offer which I rejected.

Full Experience

Sharing my full interview loop for Deliveroo. The process was structured across DSA, system design, and behavioral rounds, with a noticeable emphasis on ownership and open-ended thinking.

Online Assessment (90 mins - Hackerrank)

Section 1:

  • 15 multiple choice questions on data structures, algorithms, and system design fundamentals.

Section 2 - Coding Problem:

  • Implement a simple Rate Limiter with per-user and per-time constraints.

Section 3 - REST API Problem:

  • Build a function to fetch and return the finest hotel based on ratings from a provided API. Required pagination handling and efficient filtering.

Architecture / HLD Round

Topic:

Design a system to handle a flash sale of 6 million burgers in 10 minutes.

Focus Areas:

  • Traffic throttling
  • Inventory locking
  • Order queuing
  • Eventual consistency and failure handling
  • No over selling

Behavioral Round

Discussion:

Went over five behavioral stories, covering leadership principles like:

  • Ownership
  • Dealing with failure
  • Driving cross-functional decisions

Coding Round

Problem:

Implement a session-based authentication system with support for three types of queries:"generate","renew","count"

It was open-ended, with no fixed solution. Emphasis was on clean API design, data structures, boundary conditions, test cases and performance.

VP / Country Head Round

Discussion Topics:

  • Leadership experiences: mentoring juniors, handling disagreement, and complex project delivery
  • Strategic thinking around leveraging AI for team productivity
  • Vision and product-aligned engineering contributions

Interview Questions (6)

Q1
Implement a Rate Limiter
Data Structures & Algorithms

Implement a simple Rate Limiter with per-user and per-time constraints.

Q2
Fetch Finest Hotel from API
Data Structures & Algorithms

Build a function to fetch and return the finest hotel based on ratings from a provided API. Required pagination handling and efficient filtering.

Q3
Design Flash Sale System
System Design

Design a system to handle a flash sale of 6 million burgers in 10 minutes. Focus Areas: Traffic throttling, Inventory locking, Order queuing, Eventual consistency and failure handling, No over selling.

Q4
Behavioral Stories Discussion
Behavioral

Discussion covered five behavioral stories, focusing on leadership principles such as Ownership, Dealing with failure, and Driving cross-functional decisions.

Q5
Implement Session-Based Authentication System
Data Structures & Algorithms

Implement a session-based authentication system with support for three types of queries:"generate","renew","count". Emphasis was on clean API design, data structures, boundary conditions, test cases and performance.

Q6
Leadership and Strategic Discussion
Behavioral

Discussion topics included leadership experiences (mentoring juniors, handling disagreement, complex project delivery), strategic thinking around leveraging AI for team productivity, and vision/product-aligned engineering contributions.

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