I applied online. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Shopify (Ottawa, ON) in Mar 2021
Interview
I read the past several months of Glassdoor engineering reviews to prepare, it was very helpful and there were no surprises. It is a deliberate process and some of that you can control by when you schedule the next round. I wanted some time to prep before each step so it took around 5 weeks total.
From the very first contact with the recruiter, the communication was excellent. After each round they were very good about preparing me for what was up next. Also their candidate portal, which you get access to during the process, is a great resource for all rounds. All of the interviewers were helpful and very pleasant.
- First round was standard coding challenge in the language of your choosing. Mine involved working with arrays and string manipulation.
- Second round was life story. A pleasant conversation about mostly work history with some personal. Like others have said on here, this conversation is mostly driven by you so you determine what to highlight from your professional/personal history and what is not important.
- Final round was three 1.5 hour segments. Two coding challenges and the deep dive. I prepared quite a bit for the deep dive and came ready to whiteboard but ended up not needing to. The coding challenges were fairly straightforward and the interviewers were helpful to answer questions and provide guidance. The challenges take place on your computer while sharing your screen. So having the dev environment for both challenges set up ahead of time is helpful. It is a long day but it goes by fast. They also provided lunch via a meal delivery app coupon, which they didn’t have to do but was a nice touch.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Write a program to validate a string based on a given definition.
The interview was intense and definitely exceeded my expectations. The technical rounds were particularly challenging, but I felt prepared. One of the system design questions was about creating a webhook delivery system with various complexities, and I was relieved because I had explored that exact topic on PracHub just days before. After tackling some coding problems, I faced some behavioral questions that tested my thought process. Overall, the experience was demanding, but I was thrilled to receive an offer, which I happily accepted.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Design a webhook delivery system that retries on failure with exponential backoff. Cover idempotency, ordering guarantees, dead-letter queues, and how you'd handle a downstream consumer that's been offline for hours.
I applied through an employee referral. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Shopify (Toronto, ON)
Interview
Lots of rounds and meeting multiple team members enjoyable experience and the interviews really ensure that the job is a right fit. There are multiple checkpoints to ensure both parties are on the same page
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Walk through a past technical project you worked on or owned.
Interview process went quickly. The recruiter was very responsive and nice, and made the whole experience 10 times better. The interviewers did not ask impossible questions and focused more on the thought process than the correct answer.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
The first 2 interviews were LeetCode-like questions. Not directly from leetcode, but if you know your data structures you'll be good. 3rd interview I had to prep a design document and share it and they asked questions about the decisions that were made and the rationale behind it.