I was contacted directly by an internal recruiter at Deliveroo. After an initial 30 minutes phone interview I was put forward for the first stage technical assessment. The first stage assessments are handled by a third party interviewing platform called Karat. The interview takes the form of a one hour video call, split into 10/15 minutes for initial questions and then 45 minutes for a coding exercise. There are six technical questions on two subjects. The subjects are chosen by the candidate from a set of five. There doesn't seem to be any customisation of the questions depending on the role or experience so you need to know your Computer Science fundamentals. The coding exercise is not a paired session, rather you try to solve as many exercises as possible in the timeframe whilst explaining your reasoning to the interviewer who may chip in if you're having difficulty. The issue with these exercises is that you're told in no uncertain terms that it doesn't matter how you solve the problem, just that you get a working solution, so no formalised testing, no opportunity to work and refactor as you go, it's "Come up with an algorithm and away you go". In my experience at least this resulted in rushed attempts and poor performance (I assume). After the assessment you have the option of redoing it once within 24 hours if you thought your performance wasn't indicative. I took this option. After both attempts I received confirmation from Karat that the original recruiter would be in contact to give feedback. This didn't happen. A few days later I contacted the recruiter directly to request feedback but have been ghosted since, so I can only assume that I failed the technical assessment.

Here's a more polished version of the review: I would not recommend engaging with this company. The process starts with a deceptively simple HackerRank test, followed by an interview loop where some interviewers display a condescending attitude. - Round 1: Behavioral - This was the only positive experience, as the manager conducting it was professional and respectful. - Round 2: System Design - The interviewer frequently interrupted, making it difficult to present my ideas fully. - Round 3: Coding - They assign a home task, then extend it with unclear follow-up questions during the interview. Despite no clear instructions, they expect you to guess the output and use that as a basis for rejection. I've heard that UK developers sometimes undermine Indian developers, and unfortunately, this experience seemed to confirm that, as the interviewers appeared intent on making me fail rather than assessing my abilities fairly.